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 Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
?A Curtained Bed, with Figures c.1834–6
D28906
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 22
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the setting appears to be a curtained bed, possibly with pale figures within and standing towards the left, but this is open to interpretation.
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
Technical notes:
The unaccessioned, blank recto is numbered in red ink ‘22’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 22’; it bears some watercolour offsetting from folio 21 verso (D28904). There is some offsetting from the present page at the gutter of the unaccessioned recto of folio 23 opposite (its verso being D28908).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with Figures 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-figures-r1148997, accessed 21 November 2024.