Turner's Secret Sketches

The paintings of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) are admired by art lovers everywhere. This book reveals a new side of Turner: his erotic drawings. Until a few years ago, biographies of both Turner and critic John Ruskin claimed that in 1858 Ruskin burned bundles of erotic paintings and drawings in a fit of embarrassed Victorian censorship, to protect the artist’s reputation. However, in 2005 Turner scholar Ian Warrell suggested that the alleged burning never took place, and that almost all of the allegedly destroyed drawings are actually in the Tate collection, part of the Turner Bequest. Here Warrell explores this little-known aspect of the artist’s work in detail, placing the work in the context of Turner’s social and artistic milieu, contemporary preoccupations with art for public and “private” consumption, and the intricacies of the artist’s personal life and canonical works.