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 th...