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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Petworth House: A Bedroom with a Large Four-Poster Bed with Dark Green Curtains 1827

Petworth House: A Bedroom with a Large Four–Poster Bed with Dark Green Curtains 1827
D22679
Turner Bequest CCXLIV 17
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 138 x 189 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 17’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of a large group of separate studies, most of which were made in gouache and watercolour on blue paper, associated with a visit to Petworth House in West Sussex, the home of the third Earl of Egremont. For more information, see the Introduction to this section.
Turner made numerous studies of the bedrooms at Petworth during his 1827 visit; for more information and a list see the entry for Tate D22677 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 15). While the present composition has previously been linked to Petworth’s state bed,1 which Turner portrayed in D22677, Christopher Rowell has since convincingly argued that it shows neither the state bed nor one of three recorded as supplied by Chippendale in 1779.2 As he noted, the bed seen here, hung with plain green curtains, has a distinctive cornice and a canopy surmounted by an Earl’s coronet.3 He surmises that as only one of the bedrooms containing a green bed also had what was listed as an ‘Indian cabinet’ in the 1837 inventory, this room is probably the one off the first landing of the Oak Staircase, on the lower-ceilinged mezzanine level of the house.4
This interior scene reveals a more detailed approach than most of the Petworth studies and is somewhat reminiscent of Turner’s more formal Farnley Hall interiors of the previous decade, such as his gouache study of an oak panelled hall (private collection5). Also significant is the presence of an apparently nude figure on the bed; for more information about the intimate nature of some of the Petworth bedroom studies, see the entry for D22677.
1
See Butlin, Luther and Warrell 1989, pp.146, 147, 203.
2
See Rowell, Warrell and Blayney Brown 2002, p.164.
3
Ibid, p.164.
4
Ibid, p.164.
5
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.369 no.593.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘7 | l’ near centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXLIV 17’ bottom left.

Elizabeth Jacklin
February 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Petworth House: A Bedroom with a Large Four–Poster Bed with Dark Green Curtains 1827’, catalogue entry, February 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/petworth-house-a-bedroom-with-a-large-four-poster-bed-with-dark-green-curtains-r1209113, accessed 29 April 2025.