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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s terse 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Lovers’): ‘Jessica at the window?’.1 He was presumably thinking of Turner’s painting Jessica, exhibited in 1830 (Tate T03887, displayed at Petworth House),2 which shows the single central figure facing the viewer through an open window which fills almost the whole picture; it was accompanied in the Royal Academy catalogue on that occasion by the text ‘Shylock – “Jessica, shut the window, I say” – The Merchant of Venice.’ This was a spurious quotation from Shakespeare’s play, albeit likely conflated from similar lines.3

In 1836 Turner had shown another painting, Juliet and her Nurse (private collection; engraved in 1842 as ‘St Mark’s Place, Venice’: Tate impression T05188),4 with the characters from Shakespeare’s Verona tragedy Romeo and Juliet incongruously overlooking the Piazza San Marco.5 Uncertainty as to the dates of Turner’s visit(s) to Venice between 1819 and 1840 (agreed comparatively recently as limited to one intermediate occasion, in 1833) has often led to various gouache works on grey and brown paper now associated with 1840, including nocturnal scenes with fireworks around the Bacino, being considered as studies for the painting.6 The 1837 oil of The Grand Canal, Venice (Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California)7 features a minor episode from The Merchant of Venice, and other subjects in the present subsection have resonances with Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice.8

Potentially, therefore, a Shakespearean connection might be feasible here. While noting a possible Merchant link, Andrew Wilton characterised the scene less romantically than Finberg, classifying it prosaically as ‘Two Women at a Window, below which stand Two Men’.9 Lindsay Stainton tentatively called it ‘The lovers: a scene from “The Merchant of Venice” (?)’, noting that Turner ‘was quite capable of imagining it being staged in the streets of Venice’, with a ‘resulting element of fantasy’.10 Anne Lyles subtitled it ‘? a Scene from “Romeo and Juliet”’, suggesting the well-known balcony scene in the play,11 ‘when Romeo, having spotted Juliet at a window, approaches to speak to her from below (in this study the figure lower left appears to be playing a musical instrument)’ with the ‘apparently older woman ... explained as her nurse, now wearing night dress.’12 Jan Piggott has suggested an alternative where the ‘woman with a maid at a window and a lover with musician below, ... may represent Jessica and Lorenzo’,13 although in the relevant scene from the Merchant where Jessica speaks to her future husband Lorenzo through a window prior to eloping, she is disguised as a boy.14

Praising the work as ‘one of those brilliant reductions in which a few strokes of the brush are all that is required’ such that ‘a mood is created’ and a ‘piece of Venice is taking place’, Michael Bockemühl nevertheless described the scene carefully, observing ‘a guitarist – perhaps two – on the steps. Two young ladies, clad in negligees, are standing at the open window; the one on the right is leaning forward somewhat, brushed by moonlight, while the other remains behind her in the shadow.’15

When the sheet was exhibited in 1999 as a Romeo and Juliet subject, Evelyn Joll bluntly questioned the traditional literary readings, ‘for, behind a décolletée Juliet in the casement, stands a young woman, certainly not the Nurse, who is completely topless.’16 While acknowledging the Shakespearean cross-currents in Turner’s work, and the Jessica motif in particular, Ian Warrell subsequently developed this more erotic interpretation, noting that Venice remained in Turner’s time ‘a centre of sexual licence’,17 and that here there are ‘two women leaning from a window instead of one, the second of whom appears to be both buxom and topless’, with ‘a strong suggestion of flirtation in evidence that is at odds with the glowing statue of some saint in the niche to the right’.18 He has suggested that another work in this grouping, showing an interior with a nude ‘possibly sprawled in post-coital abandon’19 may be thematically linked (Tate D32236; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 17), although Shakespearean links have also been proposed for the latter.

See also Tate D36089 and D36259 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 243, 392), two further shadowy figure compositions included here, which Eric Shanes suggested as ‘possibly related’.20

Technical notes:

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as being on ‘Red-brown paper made at Cartieri Pietro Milani Mill, Fabriano, with a watermark showing the letter “M” accompanied by laurel leaves:1 Tate D32224, D32227, D32230, D32238–D32241, D32245–D32246, D32248, D32251, D32254 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5, 8, 11, 19–22, 26, 27, 29, CCCXIX 3, 6). As Warrell has observed; the support ‘seems to be quite absorbent, so that the colours penetrate through to the back of the sheet’.2

Verso:

Blank; stained and darkened; inscribed by Turner in ink ‘26’ bottom right, upside down; inscribed in pencil ‘53’ above centre, ascending vertically; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVIII – 20’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXVIII.20’ bottom right. For Turner’s ink numbering of many similar sheets, see the Introduction to the tour.