J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Having included this sheet somewhat randomly in one of the extensive ‘Miscellaneous: Colour’ sections (mostly of landscape studies) at the end of his 1909 Inventory,1 Finberg subsequently declared that it ‘should have been included’ in Turner Bequest section CCCXIX (‘Venice: Miscellaneous. (d) Brown Paper: small’),2 with other subjects now associated with Turner’s 1840 stay. He described the subject as ‘two ladies dressing in a spacious room, with a man’s figure in black seated with his back to the spectator’.3 The looming shadow towards the left is cast either by the woman with her arms raised, brightly lit by a hidden source beyond the ornate fireplace, or from the bulky silhouetted figure lounging on one elbow in the firelight. The barely draped second woman looks on from the right foreground, pale in the shadows.4

Notwithstanding Finberg’s revised opinion, the work is not mentioned in the either of the later standard surveys of Turner’s Venice work.5 With nothing obviously Venetian in the setting, the sheet came to be associated with Petworth House in Sussex, where Turner often stayed as a guest of his patron Lord Egremont. A vivid series of gouache studies on blue paper associated with his 1827 visit (mostly Tate; Turner Bequest CCXLIV) evoke aspects of the relaxed domestic situation in public and private, including numerous bedroom scenes such as Tate D22679 and D22777 (CCXLIV 17, 115). In first suggesting the link, Andrew Wilton also compared the present work’s ‘more restricted colour range’ with that of the Colour Studies (1) sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXCI b),6 one of three small books including often explicitly amorous subjects focused on curtained beds; see the ‘Erotica and Improvisations c.1834–6’ section of this catalogue.

Wilton has also noted this sheet in terms of its ‘similar broad format’7 to that of the unresolved painting now called Interior of a Great House: The Drawing Room, East Cowes Castle and dated to about 1830 (Tate N01988),8 which he discussed in relation to other East Cowes subjects (see the ‘Isle of Wight 1827’ section of the present catalogue). More directly telling is his suggestion that this work ‘may have been executed at the same time’ as Tate D36089 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 243),9 a Piranesi-like study of figures in an ambiguous architectural setting which he had previously linked to Venice. Noting this, Eric Shanes subsequently categorised both as ‘Venice?’ scenes without further comment,10 also placing the present sheet among ‘Literary and Book Illustrations’, plausibly implying a narrative element and linking it to Tate D32239 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 20),11 one of the Venice figure scenes considered at times as a Shakespearean subject.

Latterly, Ian Warrell has included the present work in the ‘Souvenirs of Venice’ section of his comprehensive account of Turner’s erotic subjects, albeit noting its ‘seemingly spontaneous intimacy’ as characteristic of the Petworth studies, but observing that ‘the paper is quite unlike the blue sheets he used there in 1827. Though it would be difficult to prove absolutely, a connection with one of the Venetian tours is just as probable’, He dated it there to about 1833 or 1840, the occasions of Turner’s second and third trips;12 subsequently reproducing it without further discussion in his second survey of Turner’s erotica, he mentioned neither Petworth nor Venice and placed it more broadly as ‘c.1830s’.13

There may be a direct physical relationship between this sheet and D36089, as noted below, which would likely reinforce the idea of a thematic link.

Technical notes:

Visual examination indicates that the top edge of this sheet and the bottom edge of Tate D36089 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 243) appear to match, as do the narrow unpainted margin on the left the rough edge at the right of each, suggesting that they were originally joined. An irregular strip of unrelated dark colour along the bottom of D36089 seems continuous with the shadowy wall at the top right here, implying that the two were at least partly worked on together before being neatly torn into two along a fold or straight edge, which would not be unusual in Turner’s practice; see for instance the technical notes for Tate D32252 (Turner Bequest CCCXIX 4) in the present grouping.

As neither of the two sheets was included in Ian Warrell’s technical notes on the supports used for Turner’s Venice subjects, including the various mid-toned grey and brown Italian papers which appear similar,1 the possibility that they were once parts of a single sheet of that sort awaits confirmation.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘23’ above left of centre, upside down; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCLXIV – 392’ bottom centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCLXIV – 392’ towards bottom right.