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

It has been proposed that the sequence between here and folio 12 verso (D28886) ‘form a series of studies narrating an erotic adventure’ as distinct from other ‘studies on similar themes throughout the book’.1 There may be a case for extending or shortening this range slightly – Raphael Rosenberg has suggested that it ends at folio 11 recto (D28885),2 after the throes of passion – but in principle this seems likely, as some of the scenes are more conventionally pictorial and carefully defined by drawing with the brush (albeit sometimes sexually explicit) than the often rather rough, undeveloped washes later on.

Jack Lindsay has imagined them as ‘the record of an episode at an inn (on the Rhine, perhaps). A set of delightful little paintings show a servant-girl undressing, a couple tumbling in the large bed, compositions derived from their embraces, and what are almost pure effects of colour and light derived from the experience.’3 Rosenberg reads the present composition as possibly showing a bearded nobleman in the foreground and a lady at a window in the background, who may be the protagonists on subsequent pages.4 This is the most heavily worked of the sequence, with an Old Master-like subtlety of light chiaroscuro which the rest lack, although the figures remain rather unclear. Andrew Wilton has noted a particular similarity to the gouache studies of interiors Turner made at Petworth House in 1827 (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXLIV), and his subsequent interest in the chiaroscuro effects in Rembrandt’s work5 (see also the general Introduction to the present grouping).

For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.

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