Exhibited in 1830 with a reference to Shakespeare Merchant of Venice:

Shylock - Jessica, shut the window, I say.

There is probably an oblique reference to Rembrandt's Jewish subjects; in any case the composition of a girl seen half-length through an opening, her left hand extended to hold a feature at the edge of that opening, recalls Rembrandt's Lady with a Fan' in the Royal Collection (repr. illustrated souvenir, Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, Royal Academy 1952-3, p.7). Turner had already made a direct allusion to his model in the rather similar picture of 'Rembrandt's Daughter', exhibited in 1827 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University). But Rembrandt's near-monochrome is transformed into a blaze of colour, which, together with Turner's somewhat ill-drawn but by no means unattractive figure, seems to have aroused the universal condemnation of the critics. The Morning Chronicle for 3 May 1830 called it an 'abortion' and went on, 'If it resembles anything conceivable, and that is scarcely so, it is a lady jumping out of a mustard-pot', while the Athenaeum for 5 June claimed that 'A hazy old clotheswoman at a back window in Holywellstreet, would show a delicate and soft-eyed Venus, compared with this daub of a drab, libelling Shakespeare out of a foggy window of King's yellow'.

Despite these criticisms Lord Egremont purchased the picture the following year, as reported in the Library of the Fine Arts for April 1831. This was apparently as a replacement for the large landscape of 'Palestrina' which Turner began con amore for Lord Egremont as his first work in Rome in 1828 and also exhibited in 1830 (it was later bought by Elhanan Bicknell and is now in the Tate Gallery, 6283); John Gage suggests that Lord Egremont's taste stopped short of the new style revealed in such Italian landscapes as this (for similar works in the exhibition see Nos.485 and 486).

This work is also available as a MultiColour 3D Print.