J.m.w. Turner : Les Carnets Secrets

In spite of his huge fame, the British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) still remains rather enigmatic. Already a legend when he was alive by his moods and oddities and by is more or less secret pictorial techniques, Turner knew after his death several posthumous "adventures". Between 1855 and 1858, while cataloguing all the works the painter bequeathed to his country, John Ruskin would have destroyed works considered as too obscene. It is unclear whether this story is authentic; however 108 drawings of erotic nature still remain. On one of the spared notebooks, Ruskin even wrote in pencil: "Kept only as a proof of sexual disorder."

This book presents thus simple obscene graffiti, unusual nudes, sexual "reports" from his trips abroad, or strange night scenes prefiguring Degas, all by Turner's hand.