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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Erotica and Improvisations c.1834-6 > Colour Studies (2) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing beside It c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing beside It’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing beside It c.1834–6
D28878
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 5
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(c) – 5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
It has been proposed that the sequence between folios 1 recto and 12 verso (D28874–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
Whatever Turner’s overall idea may have been, here there appear to be the pale standing figures of a man and woman (with her back to the viewer) embracing to the right of the shadowy interior of a curtained bed.
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
1
Wilton 1974, p.126; see also Andrew Wilton in John Gage, Jerrold Ziff, Nicholas Alfrey and others, J.M.W. Turner, à l’occasion du cinquantième anniversaire du British Council, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris 1983, p.[239] under no.173.
2
See Rosenberg 2007, p.327 note 23.
3
Jack Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work: A Critical Biography, London 1966, p.161.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight offsetting of watercolour from folio 6 recto opposite (D28879).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing beside It c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-curtained-bed-with-a-man-and-woman-embracing-beside-it-r1148979, accessed 21 November 2024.