William Etty RA (10 March 1787 – 13 November 1849) was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. Victorian painting had gone through radical changes, and by the 1870s the realism of Etty and the Pre-Raphaelites had given way to the ideas of the Aesthetic Movement, abandoning the traditions of storytelling and moralising in favour of painting works designed for aesthetic appeal rather than for their narrative or subject.
He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes. Its success prompted several further depictions of historical scenes with nudes. All but one of the works he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1820s contained at least one nude figure, and he acquired a reputation for indecency. Despite this, he was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, and in 1828 was elected a Royal Academician, at the time the highest honour available to an artist. Although he was one of the most respected artists in the country he continued to study at life classes throughout his life, a practice considered inappropriate by his fellow artists. In the 1830s Etty began to branch out into the more lucrative but less respected field of portraiture, and later became the first English painter to paint significant still lifes. He continued to paint both male and female nudes, which caused severe criticism and condemnation from some elements of the press.
Etty was prolific and commercially successful throughout the 1840s, but the quality of his work deteriorated throughout this period. As his health progressively worsened he retired to York in 1848. He died in 1849, shortly after a major retrospective exhibition. In the immediate aftermath of his death his works became highly collectable and sold for large sums. Changing tastes meant his work later fell out of fashion, and imitators soon abandoned his style.
William Etty was born in Feasegate, York, on 10 March 1787, the seventh child of Matthew and Esther Etty, née Calverley. Although Matthew Etty was a successful miller and baker, he bore a large family and was never financially secure. Esther Calverley’s brother unexpectedly inherited the title of Squire of Hayton in 1745, nine years before Esther’s birth, but disowned her following her marriage to Matthew as he considered him beneath her station. The family were strict Methodists and the young William was raised as such, although he disliked the spartan appearance of the Methodist chapel and liked to attend his Anglican parish church or York Minster when able.
The young William showed artistic promise from an early age, drawing in chalk on the wooden floor of his father’s shop. From the age of four he attended local schools in York, before being sent at the age of 10 to Mr. Hall’s Academy, a boarding school in nearby Pocklington, which he left two years later. On 8 October 1798, at the age of 11, William was apprenticed as a printer to Robert Peck of Hull, publisher of the Hull Packet. While Etty found the work exhausting and unpleasant, he continued to draw in his spare time, and his job gave him the opportunity to broaden his education by reading books. It seems likely that it was working as a printer that led him to realise for the first time that it was possible for someone to make a living drawing and painting.
On 23 October 1805 Etty’s seven-year indenture with Peck expired, an event greeted with great happiness as he intensely disliked the job. He remained in Hull for a further three weeks as a journeyman printer. He moved to London “with a few pieces of chalk-crayons in colours”, to stay with his older brother Walter in Lombard Street. Walter was working for the successful gold lace manufacturer Bodley, Etty and Bodley, in which their father’s brother, also named William Etty, was partner. He arrived in London on 23 November 1805, with the intention of gaining admission to the Royal Academy Schools.
Applicants to the Royal Academy Schools were expected to pass stringent ability tests, and on his arrival in London Etty set about practicing, drawing “from prints and from nature”. Aware that all successful applicants were expected to produce high quality drawings of classical sculptures, he spent much time “in a plaster-cast shop, kept by Gianelli, in that lane near to Smithfield, immortalised by Dr. Johnson’s visit to see ‘The Ghost’ there”, which he described as “My first academy”.
Etty obtained a letter of introduction from Member of Parliament Richard Sharp to painter John Opie. He visited Opie with this letter, and showed him a drawing he had done from a cast of Cupid and Psyche. Impressed by the quality of his work, Opie in turn recommended Etty to Henry Fuseli, who accepted Etty into the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer. Having satisfactorily completed drawings from casts of Laocoön and “the Torso of Michelangelo”, Etty was accepted as a full student on 15 January 1807.
Peu de temps après Etty a rejoint l’AR, quatre grandes conférences sur la peinture ont été prononcées par John Opie en Février et Mars 1807. En eux, Opie a dit que la peinture « met en vue les héros, les sages et les beautés des périodes les plus reculés, les habitants des la plupart des régions éloignées, et fixe et tend à perpétuer les formes de nos jours; il nous présente les actes héroïques, les événements remarquables, et les exemples intéressants de la piété, le patriotisme et l’humanité de tous les âges; et selon la nature de l’action représentée, nous remplit de plaisir innocent, excite notre horreur de crimes, nous émeut à la piété, ou nous inspire des sentiments élevés ». Opie a rejeté la tradition de Reynolds idéaliser les sujets de tableaux, en observant qu’il ne croyait pas « que la chair des héros est moins comme chair que celle des autres hommes ». Opie a conseillé à ses étudiants de prêter une grande attention à Titian, dont l’utilisation de la couleur qu’il considérait comme sans égal, conseiller aux élèves que « la coloration est le soleil de l’art, que les vêtements pauvreté en sourires et en double les charmes de la beauté. Les avis de Opie a fait une profonde impression sur le jeune Etty, et il détiendraient ces vues tout au long de sa carrière.
By this time, Etty had developed a great admiration for the portrait painter Thomas Lawrence, and hoped to learn from him. After having arranged an introduction via Henry Fuseli, Etty’s uncle William met with Lawrence and paid him 100 guineas (about £7,500 in 2017 terms) in return for his accepting the younger William as a private pupil for a year.
Under this arrangement Etty did not receive formal tuition from Lawrence. Instead, Lawrence set aside a room in his attic for Etty to copy from his pictures, and agreed to answer Etty’s questions when he was in a position to do so. Etty found the experience of trying to copy Lawrence’s work extremely frustrating, and in his own words “was ready to run away”, but he persisted and eventually taught himself to copy Lawrence’s work very closely. Although Etty found his year with Lawrence a frustrating experience, his development of the ability to copy other works served him in good stead in future when he came to copy elements from the Old Masters.
Once he had completed his year with Lawrence, Etty returned to the Royal Academy, drawing at the life class and copying other paintings, as well as undertaking commissions and doing occasional work for Lawrence to earn money. He was unsuccessful in all the Academy’s competitions, and every painting he submitted for the Summer Exhibition was rejected.
In 1809 Etty’s uncle William, with whom he had been staying, died. Etty was forced into an inconvenient transient lifestyle, moving from lodging to lodging. However, Etty had been left a significant sum in his uncle’s will, and his brother Walter now took over their uncle’s position at Bodley, Etty and Bodley, giving Walter the means to support the younger William’s work financially. In 1811 Etty’s persistence paid off. He finally had two of his paintings accepted for exhibition—Telemachus Rescues Antiope from the Fury of the Wild Boar at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and Sappho at the British Institution. The latter sold for the respectable sum of 25 guineas (about £1,600 in 2017 terms). Although from now on Etty would have at least one work accepted for the Summer Exhibition each year, he had little commercial success and generated little interest over the next few years. By 1814, Etty was becoming widely respected at the RA for his use of colour and in particular his ability to produce realistic flesh tones.
At the time, there were no public art galleries in England with permanent collections. In 1816, in the face of his continued lack of success, Etty decided to spend a year in Italy to study the artworks held in the great Italian collections. He had made a brief visit to France in early 1815, but other than this had never been abroad. The 28-year-old Etty had fallen in love, and fretted about the difficulties a potential marriage would cause, and whether it would be right to travel to further his career even though it would mean taking his new wife to a foreign country. In the event, the woman rejected him, and he set out for the Continent in early September 1816.
Etty a débarqué à Dieppe, et a fait son chemin à Paris via Rouen. Bien qu’il ait admis à la recherche de la France un beau pays, il était malheureux tout au long de son séjour là-bas, souffrant du mal du pays sévère; peu de temps après son arrivée à Paris, il écrit à son cousin Martha Bodley «J’espère que j’aimerai mieux que l’Italie Paris, ou je pense que je ne serai résolution d’arrêter une année. Si je ne le fais pas, je me contente de voir ce que je pense la peine; puis revenir « Il a voyagé partir via Genève, mais a trouvé frustrant Suisse. bien qu’il avait apporté son propre équipement de fabrication du thé avec lui, dans les villages de montagne, il a trouvé plus éloignés difficile d’obtenir du lait pour son thé. Voyager à travers le col du Simplon Piémont ravivé ses esprits un peu; il a trouvé la variété de la couleur dans les paysages de l’Italie du Nord fascinant,
Malgré la grandeur de Florence, Etty a été sévèrement déprimé, écrit à son frère le 5 Octobre: « Je me sens si seul, il est impossible pour moi d’être heureux » et se plaignant de « la vermine dans le lit, la saleté et la saleté » qu’il considérait comme « comme aucun Anglais peut avoir une idée de, qui n’a pas été témoin ». Son état émotionnel a rendu impossible pour lui d’étudier, et dans un mois de son arrivée en Italie, il a commencé le voyage de retour en Angleterre, l’arrêt à Paris le 26 Octobre 1816. A Paris, il inscrit dans l’atelier de Jean-Baptiste Regnault mais trouvé l’atmosphère trop tapageuse et le studio trop plein de Français, et il a quitté après une semaine. A Paris, il a également assisté à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts, et a amassé une grande quantité d’impressions des boutiques d’art de Paris. Pourtant le mal du pays, Etty a quitté Paris, retour à Londres en Novembre.
Notwithstanding his unhappiness, Etty appears to have developed as a painter during his travels. For the first time, his two paintings exhibited at the 1817 Summer Exhibition (Bacchanalians: a Sketch and Cupid and Euphrosyne) attracted a favourable review in the press, in this case from William Paulet Carey writing in the Literary Gazette who considered Bacchanalians “a fine classical invention” and Cupid as showing “splendid promise”. Carey was later to take great pride in being the first critic to recognise Etty’s potential, and continued to champion him throughout his career. In 1818 Etty entered a copy of Damiano Mazza’s The Rape of Ganymede—at the time thought to be by Titian—in one of the Royal Academy’s painting competitions. Easily the most accomplished entry in the competition, Etty was due to win until two of the other contestants complained that he had technically breached RA rules by briefly removing the painting from Academy premises to work on it at home; they further complained that Etty was technically a professional artist and thus ineligible for the contest despite his still being a student. Etty was disqualified from the competition, but the high quality of his work further raised his prestige within the Academy. Although his income was still low and he was surviving on gifts from his brother, at some point by 1818 Etty hired an assistant, George Henry Franklin.
Lors de l’exposition d’été 1820, Etty expose deux tableaux: Drunken Barnaby et The Coral Finder: Vénus et ses satellites Youthful arrivant à l’île de Paphos. Drunken Barnaby est une scène d’un homme ivre être emporté d’une auberge alors qu’une barmaid regarde; la barmaid apparaît comme construction robuste, grasse et aux joues roses, un style dans lequel Etty continuerait à peindre des femmes tout au long de sa carrière. Le Coral Finder est fortement inspiré par Titien, et représente Vénus Victrix couché nu dans un bateau d’or, entouré d’agents très légèrement vêtues. Il a été la première utilisation de Etty de la combinaison de figures nues et des références mythologiques ou littéraires dont il allait devenir célèbre.
The Coral Finder was sold at exhibition to piano manufacturer Thomas Tomkinson for £30 (about £2,200 in 2017 terms). Sir Francis Freeling had admired The Coral Finder at its exhibition, and on learning that it had already been sold he commissioned Etty to paint a similar picture on a more ambitious scale, for a fee of 200 guineas (about £15,100 in 2017 terms). Etty had for some time been musing on the possibility of a painting of Cleopatra, and took the opportunity provided by Freeling to paint a picture of her based loosely on the composition of The Coral Finder.
Cleopatra’s Arrival in Cilicia (also known as The Triumph of Cleopatra) is based loosely on Plutarch’s Life of Antony and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, in which the Queen of Egypt travels to Tarsus in Cilicia aboard a grand ship to cement an alliance with the Roman general Mark Antony. While superficially similar to The Coral Finder, Cleopatra is more closely related to the style of Regnault, with its intentionally cramped and crowded composition. The individual figures are out of proportion to each other and the ship, while many figures are tightly positioned within a small section of the painting. As well as from Regnault, the work borrows elements from Titian, Rubens and classical sculpture.
When exhibited in 1821, Cleopatra was generally extremely well received, and considered among the finest paintings of its kind, and its success inspired Etty to paint more works in a similar vein. The exhibition of Cleopatra, coupled with the exhibition in January 1822 of A Sketch from One of Gray’s Odes (Youth on the Prow) which also depicted nude figures on a boat, drew criticism of Etty for his treatment of female nudes. The Times in early 1822 chided Etty, remarking that “We take this opportunity of advising Mr. Etty, who got some reputation for painting “Cleopatra’s Galley”, not to be seduced into a style which can gratify only the most vicious taste. Naked figures, when painted with the purity of Raphael, may be endured: but nakedness without purity is offensive and indecent, and on Mr. Etty’s canvass is mere dirty flesh.” Unlike nude studies by other artists of the period, Etty made no attempt to idealise the female nudes in Cleopatra, but instead painted them in realistic poses and realistic flesh tones. Possibly alarmed by the criticism, Freeling persuaded Etty to paint clothes onto some of the figures in Cleopatra, although in 1829 he allowed Etty to return the figures to the state in which he had originally painted them.
The success of Cleopatra notwithstanding, Etty remained a student at the RA and continued with a rigorous programme of study. Now in his mid 30s, he felt that for his work to progress beyond mere competence he needed a chance to study those European masters whose styles he most admired, despite his unpleasant experiences the last time he left England.
Recalling his homesickness and loneliness the last time he had ventured abroad, for his next foreign trip Etty travelled in the company of Richard Evans, who had been a fellow student of Thomas Lawrence. Despite warnings that Italy would be uncomfortably hot, the two men set out on 23 June 1822 with the aim of reaching Rome. Crossing to France by means of the recently developed steamboat, they arrived in Paris on 26 June. They stayed in Paris for two weeks, visiting Versailles and the city’s public art galleries; they also visited the much-reduced remaining exhibits of the Louvre. The Louvre was hosting an exhibition of modern French painting at the time, at which Etty felt a great dislike for the quality of portraiture in France, but he was nonetheless greatly impressed by the permanent collections, in particular Rubens’s Marie de’ Medici cycle, elements of which he would later reuse in many of his own works.
Travelling onwards through Dijon and Switzerland, Etty and Evans passed over the Simplon Pass and on to Milan, where they viewed Leonardo’s The Last Supper and visited the Brera Gallery. After a sixteen-day cabriolet ride through the gruelling heat of an unusually hot summer, the two men reached Florence, where they stayed for two days visiting the city’s galleries. On 10 August, the two men finally reached Rome.
Although Etty was somewhat disappointed by Rome, comparing the architecture of St. Peter’s unfavourably with that of St. Paul’s, he was highly impressed with Michelangelo’s “almost Venetian” use of colour in the Sistine Chapel. He also met with Antonio Canova, to whom he had been recommended by Lawrence, shortly before Canova’s death. Rome was at the time suffering badly from malaria, and after two weeks Etty decided to leave for Naples. Evans had contracted malaria and decided to stay in Rome, and so Etty travelled to Naples alone and returned to Rome in the company of actor William Macready, who happened to be making the same journey, and with whom he remained a good friend for the rest of his life. On his return to Rome, Etty toured the city’s museums, making copies of various artworks, particularly those of the Venetian artists such as Titian and Veronese whom he so admired.
Feeling unsettled, Etty left Rome for Venice, intending to remain there for 10 days and then return to England. Evans preferred to remain in Rome, so Etty travelled alone, pausing briefly in Florence and in Ferrara (where he stopped to kiss the armchair of Ludovico Ariosto). The painter Charles Lock Eastlake, then resident in Rome, had provided Etty with a letter of introduction to Harry D’Orville, British Vice consul in Venice; D’Orville was so impressed with Etty that he arranged for him to stay in his own house, rather than in lodgings. Etty had long considered Venice his spiritual home and “the hope and idol of my professional life”, and had often wondered why, given its artistic importance, so few English travellers visited the city. He was not disappointed. Throughout the remainder of his life, he would look back on his visit to Venice with great fondness, writing shortly before his death that “Venezia, cara Venezia! thy pictured glories haunt my fancy now!”
Although Etty had only intended to stay for 10 days, he was so taken with Venice that he remained for over seven months. He fell into a routine of copying paintings in Venetian collections by day, and attending the life class of the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts by night, producing around 50 oil paintings in total as well as numerous pencil sketches. He was extremely impressed with the high quality of the Venetian Academy; the instructors in their turn were extremely impressed with the quality of Etty’s work, in particular his flesh tones. He acquired the nickname of “Il Diavolo” owing to the high speed at which he was able to paint, and watching him at work became something of a spectacle in its own right; luminaries including Gioachino Rossini and Ladislaus Pyrker (then Patriarch of Venice) came to watch him paint. So devoted was Etty to his studies in Venice that he exhibited no original work in 1823, writing to his brother that “If one spent all the time in painting originals, one might as well, nay better, be at home”. The members of the Venetian Academy were so impressed by Etty that he was elected an Honorary Academician.
By 7 June 1823, Etty felt that he had reached the limits of what he could accomplish in Venice, and was considering returning home. Soon afterwards he left Venice for Florence, with the intention of creating a full-size replica of Titian’s Venus of Urbino, considered one of the finest works of the Venetian school of painting. Although the Uffizi management were hostile to this proposal, after 10 days of negotiations they allowed Etty to create his copy. His contemporaries considered it among the finest copies ever made of a painting generally considered to be impossible to copy. In late July Etty began the journey home, pausing for a further two months in Venice. On 8 October 1823 Etty finally left Venice, travelling via Mantua and Geneva to Paris.
Etty had intended to travel to England, but instead remained in Paris, to resume copying works in Paris galleries, collecting prints and buying a lay figure and around 200 paintbrushes, both of which the French made to a higher standard than English manufacturers. In early January 1824, Etty finally returned to London.
As soon as he arrived home, Etty began to work on ensuring he had at least one picture ready for the 1824 Summer Exhibition. He decided to return to a theme for which he had created a sketch in 1820, that of the story of Pandora and in particular the passage in Hesiod in which the seasons crown her with a wreath. He had exhibited a sketch in 1820 on the same theme, and had already decided on the arrangement of the figures. His first attempt in 1824 was abandoned half-finished, and he began again on a smaller canvas with different positioning of the key figures of Pandora, Vulcan and Venus.
Pandora Crowned by the Seasons is an unusual composition, painted to resemble a bas-relief in which the different elements are emerging from a flat background. The figure of Pandora stands in the centre, with Vulcan to one side and Venus and Cupid to the other, each leaning away from her; the figures of Vulcan and Venus, along with the four figures representing the seasons in the upper corners of the canvas, create a diamond shape around Pandora. The foot of Vulcan rests upon the picture frame, a favourite device of Rubens; elements of the picture’s composition are also taken from an 1817 engraving on the same subject, drawn by Etty’s fellow York artist John Flaxman and engraved by William Blake. As with all Etty’s history paintings from this time on, he worked by painting the figures first, and only filling in the background once the figures were complete.
Although recognisably descended from earlier works such as The Coral Finder, Pandora was a far more accomplished work than those Etty exhibited prior to his travels. Although some critics were reluctant to accept Etty’s combination of realistic figures and an unrealistic setting (Etty’s 1958 biographer Dennis Farr characterises the critical reaction to Pandora as “grudging admiration not unmixed with philistinism”), his fellow artists were extremely impressed with it, to the extent that Thomas Lawrence bought the painting at the 1824 Summer Exhibition.
In the wake of the success of Pandora, Etty moved to an apartment in Buckingham Street, near the Strand, where he was to reside for the remainder of his working life. Shortly afterwards he applied to become an Associate of the Royal Academy for the first time, and on 1 November was duly elected, beating William Allan by 16 votes to seven. (The Times, at this time still hostile to Etty for his perceived indecency, sneered that “this cannot be as an honour conferred on Mr. Etty: if it were, he has deserved and should have obtained it long ago”. The same reviewer did concede that Etty’s copy of Tintoretto’s Esther Before Ahaseurus was “the most important picture in the room” in their report on an exhibition held at the British Institution of significant copies of paintings.)
In the years following his return from Italy, Etty had a very limited social life. In a typical day he would wake at 7 am, paint from around 9 or 10 am until 4 pm, after which he would have a meal. Following the meal he would take a walk, and attend life classes between 6 and 8 pm. On returning home he would drink two cups of tea, and go to bed at midnight.
Etty was considered extremely unattractive, described by his 1855 biographer Alexander Gilchrist—a great admirer—as “Slovenly in attire, short and awkward in body—large head, large hands, large feet—a face marked with the small-pox, made still more noticeable by length of jaw, and a quantity of sandy hair, long and wild: all, conspired to make him ‘one of the oddest looking creatures’ in a Young Lady’s eyes—what she would call ‘a sight’; one, not redeemed (to her), by the massive brow, its revelation of energy and power, the sign-manual of Genius there legible.”
One of his few close companions was his niece Betsy (Elizabeth Etty), fifth daughter of his brother John. Betsy was unmarried and 14 years younger than William, and became his housekeeper in 1824. She remained in his service for the rest of his life, and as he grew older William increasingly came to depend on her, suffering distress whenever they were apart and regularly writing to her in panic whenever he did not hear from her. She became his companion and acted as his assistant, alongside his official assistant George Franklin.
While he appears to have been attracted to young women throughout his life, and there is a strong suggestion in his letters that in his early years he had a sexual encounter with one of his models and possibly also a sexual encounter of some kind while in Venice, there is no suggestion that he ever had a sexual relationship with Betsy of any kind. He recorded in his diary in 1830 that “it is best I have not married because I have not noisy Children and can have nice Books, and Pictures etc”. He suffered from extreme shyness throughout his life, and when compelled to attend dinner parties would often sit silent throughout, although he was popular with fellow artists and students. Etty rarely socialised, preferring to concentrate on his painting; when on one occasion it was suggested that he had little further need of training and need not continue attending classes, he indignantly replied that “it fills up a couple of hours in the evening, I should be at a loss how else to employ”.
As she grew older Betsy suffered from numerous illnesses, the exact natures of which are not recorded but which are known to have caused William great concern. William began to become paranoid that Betsy would marry and leave his service, in 1835 going as far as to have her sign an affidavit that she would never leave him. In 1843 his older brother Charles, a successful planter in Java, returned to England after over 30 years abroad. William became deeply suspicious that Betsy was becoming too close to Charles, a suspicion intensified when Charles took her on a visit to Holland and the Rhine; Charles returned to Java in 1845. In around 1844 Betsy struck up a close relationship with the pen manufacturer and art collector Joseph Gillott, one of William’s regular customers who owned some of his pictures. Gillott was married with children, and the closeness of their relationship caused William concern. In 1848, William retired to York leaving Betsy alone in his London apartment; although aware that Betsy was considering marriage he was confident that he could persuade her to come to York and live with him in his retirement. Betsy did eventually join him in York, and was present at his death.
Spurred by the reception of Pandora, in 1825 Etty exhibited his most ambitious work to date, The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished. This was a huge canvas, 399 cm (13 ft 1 in) across, showing a woman pleading for the life of a defeated soldier as another soldier prepares to kill him. Highly unusually for a history painting at the time, Etty did not base The Combat on an incident from literature, religion or history, but instead painted a scene entirely from his own imagination, based on an idea which had first occurred to him in 1821. (He was later to describe this type of painting as “that class of compositions called by the Romans Visions, not having their origin in history or poetry”.)
The Combat was extremely well received, even by critics who had previously been hostile to Etty. In terms of composition and technique it was considered as equalling or even surpassing Titian and Veronese, and one critic considered it “one of the finest and most masterly works that ever graced the walls of the Royal Academy”, while those critics who had previously dismissed Etty for his supposed obscenity reconsidered their opinions in light of it. The Combat continued to be one of Etty’s best-regarded works, and formed the basis of a successful 1848 engraving by George Thomas Doo.
Following the success of The Combat, Etty painted a further four very large paintings. One was on the well-worn theme of the Judgement of Paris, exhibited in 1826, and three were on the theme of Judith beheading Holofernes, the first of which was exhibited in 1827. Unlike other artists who had painted this subject, Etty’s Judith paintings did not show the actual beheading, as he hoped to avoid “the offensive and revolting butchery, some have delighted and even revelled in”. The first Judith picture in particular was extremely well received critically.
In February 1828, shortly before his 41st birthday, Etty soundly defeated John Constable by 18 votes to five to become a full Royal Academician, at the time the highest honour available to an artist. By this time, complaints about his supposed indecency were beginning to resurface. All but one of the 15 paintings Etty exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1820s had included at least one nude figure, and Etty was acquiring a reputation for using respectable themes as a pretext for nudity.
For the 1828 Summer Exhibition Etty exhibited three pictures; The World Before the Flood, Venus, the Evening Star and Guardian Cherubs. (The latter was a portrait of the children of Welbore Ellis Agar, 2nd Earl of Normanton, and was the only non-nude painting exhibited by Etty at the RA in the 1820s.) Although similar to his earlier works, they were technically more accomplished. Both The World Before the Flood and Venus attracted positive reviews in the press and were sold during their exhibition for substantial sums, although the purchase by the Marquess of Stafford of The World Before the Flood—a work containing scantily clad figures of both sexes—drew a pointed comment in The Gentleman’s Magazine that it “will serve to accompany the private Titians of that nobleman”. Despite the increasing number of complaints in the press about his use of nudity, respect for Etty from his fellow artists continued to rise, and in 1828 the British Institution awarded him £100 in recognition of his talent.
As soon as the 1828 Summer Exhibition was over, Etty stopped work on other projects to concentrate on a diploma piece, without which he could not become a Royal Academician. This piece, Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs, was presented to the Academy in October, and in December 1828 Etty finally became a Royal Academician.
Even after he had achieved status as a full Royal Academician, Etty regularly attended life classes; fellow artist John Constable sarcastically wrote that “Etty an excellent example to the Modles for regularity”. His contemporaries considered this at best peculiar and at worst extremely inappropriate, complaining that for someone in his senior position to attend classes as a student was both unprofessional and unnecessary, and that it damaged the standing of the position of Academician; there were complaints that he had far outlasted the official student term of 10 years. Etty refused to give up attendance, offering to resign rather than give up his studies, and the Academy grudgingly allowed him to continue to attend classes. He divided his time between the RA’s own life classes and those at nearby St. Martin’s Lane.
Etty generally finished life studies during three evenings sittings. On the first evening he would sketch the model in charcoal or chalk, and then ink in the outline. On the second he used oil paints to fill in the figures. On the third he layered glaze and the final coverings of paint. He usually painted on millboard, re-using the reverse for fresh paintings. His female models were typically shop-girls, prostitutes, actresses or poses plastiques models, while his male models tended to be Life Guards recruited from the nearby barracks, who he thought to have an appropriate muscular physique, or occasionally men Etty met in public bath houses.
In the wake of Etty’s elevation to Academician, he exhibited two paintings at the Summer Exhibition in 1829, Benaiah, David’s Chief Captain and Hero, Having Thrown Herself from the Tower at the Sight of Leander Drowned, Dies on his Body. Benaiah is on the same large scale as The Combat at 398 cm (13 ft 1 in) wide, and is a very similar composition, although in place of the woman begging for mercy is the body of a dead soldier. Hero recycles the pose of the dead soldier from Benaiah as the dying Hero as she lies on the body of her dead lover. Unusually for Etty, Hero is painted in intentionally neutral tones rather than his usual Venetian colours, and the composition uses foreshortening of the bodies to create a single diagonal across the canvas. For the rest of his life, Etty considered Hero to be “the finest of my fine pictures”.
On 7 January 1830 Etty’s mentor Thomas Lawrence died, followed on 30 July by Etty’s mother. Etty was devastated by the loss, and was one of those considered to replace Lawrence as President of the Royal Academy, although in the event he did not stand for election. Possibly distracted by the death of Lawrence, Etty only submitted three paintings to the Summer Exhibition that year. One of these, Judith Going Forth, was an addition to Judith, which had been commissioned the previous year by that painting’s new owners, the Royal Scottish Academy.
Of Etty’s two original works exhibited at the RA in 1830, The Storm, inspired by Psalm 22, attracted little interest and was dismissed by The Gentleman’s Magazine—typically a staunch supporter of Etty’s work—as “a sad failure”. The other painting exhibited was Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, which was to prove one of the most controversial works of Etty’s career. Candaules is based on a story from Herodotus in which king Candaules arranges for his servant Gyges to spy on his wife Nyssia undressing without her knowledge. Gyges is discovered and at Nyssia’s behest kills Candaules, marries Nyssia and rules the kingdom in his stead. The painting shows the moment at which Nyssia removes the last of her clothes. By positioning the figures in such a way that none are looking out of the picture, and the viewer is directly behind Nyssia, Etty aimed for the viewer to feel the same sense of voyeurism and intrusion that Gyges would have felt, forced to spy on his master’s naked wife against his will and without her knowledge.
Etty felt that the work illustrated the moral that women are not chattels, and were entitled to punish men who violated their rights. He made little effort to explain this to his audience, and thus Candaules appeared morally highly ambiguous, inviting the viewer to sympathise either with the sexually immoral Candaules, the murderous Nyssia or the voyeuristic Gyges. From the moment it was unveiled Candaules was condemned as a cynical mix of a distasteful narrative and pornographic images, and there was near-unanimous consensus that it was inappropriate for public exhibition. The piece remained controversial long after Etty’s death; Alexander Gilchrist’s overwhelmingly flattering 1855 biography of Etty described it as “almost the only instance among Etty’s works, of an undeniably disagreeable, not to say objectionable subject”, while as late as 2011 Sarah Burnage of the University of York wrote of Candaules that “it is perhaps hard to see the painting as anything but a deliberate attempt by the artist to shock and scandalise”. Candaules was bought by wealthy collector Robert Vernon, who was in the process of building a major collection of British art and was to become one of Etty’s most important customers.
Avec les trois tableaux pour l’exposition 1830 d’été achevée, Etty a décidé de payer une visite à Paris. Etty transité par Brighton, en arrivant à Paris au début de Juillet 1830. Il a trouvé l’atmosphère de la ville était devenue désagréablement hédoniste, écrit Betsy « Si j’avais une fille, elle ne doit pas être instruite ici. Le plaisir et l’amusement sont les idoles « .
La France était en crise constitutionnelle en 1830, qui a atteint un pic à la fin de Juillet que la révolution de Juillet a commencé et des émeutes ont éclaté à travers Paris. Bien ému par la mort et la destruction qui a lieu autour de lui, Etty a estimé que le but de sa visite était de peintures étudier, et a continué à assister au Louvre pour copier les peintures que la violence faisait rage dans les rues environnantes. Le 31 Juillet, il a décidé d’abandonner le voyage; abandonnant son voyage en avant proposé de Bruxelles et d’Anvers, il a recueilli les faits qu’il avait au Louvre et partit pour Londres cinq exemplaires.
Les œuvres Etty peintes après son retour ont commencé à montrer un départ dans le style de ses efforts précédents. Alors que les chiffres figurant dans ses précédentes peintures originales avaient été peints à partir de croquis de modèles réalisés dans les classes de studio ou de la vie, à partir de maintenant il a commencé à travailler à partir de la mémoire, et en conséquence ses chiffres ont commencé à apparaître plus idéalisée; Farr (1958) décrit ses chiffres à partir de maintenant comme « [conforme] moins à un aspect particulier du modèle que d’une idée préconçue de ce que le modèle devrait ressembler ».
En 1832, Etty a repris le thème d’une esquisse de l’un des Odes de Gray, exposé en 1822 à un tel mépris de la presse. Le résultat a été de la jeunesse sur le Proue, et le plaisir à la barre, qui reste l’un de ses œuvres les plus connues. Illustrant un passage du Bard, un poème de Thomas Gray, de la jeunesse et le plaisir a été décrit comme « une histoire d’amour poétique ». Il montre un bateau doré étant propulsé par le souffle d’un enfant nu sur les voiles; un chiffre nu représentant le plaisir détient langoureusement la barre du bateau. Un enfant nu souffle des bulles, dont une autre nue sur la proue du navire, ce qui représente la jeunesse, atteint pour attraper. Naïades, encore une fois nue, nager autour et grimpent sur le bateau.
Le barde était la destruction anglaise de la culture galloise et la baisse subséquente de la Plantagenêt et son remplacement par la Chambre galloise de Tudor, et il y avait un sentiment général parmi les critiques que Etty avait mal compris le point des métaphores utilisées par Gray. Etty a affirmé que son interprétation inhabituelle du texte avait pour but de créer « une allégorie générale de la vie humaine, ses plaisirs, si vides vains non fondées sur les lois de celui qui est le rocher des siècles », et que la peinture a servi de morale avertissement au sujet de la poursuite du plaisir vide. Cette explication semble avoir laissé pas convaincu les critiques. Même les critiques les plus favorables à des réalisations techniques de Etty dans la création de l’image ont du mal à déterminer ce que la peinture était censé représenter; d’autres critiques étaient plus ouvertement hostiles, avec The Morning Chronicle condamnant comme « l’indulgence de ce que nous espérions une fois un classique, mais qui sont maintenant convaincus, est un esprit lascive ». Acheté pour une somme énorme par Robert Vernon sur son exposition, de la jeunesse et le plaisir est resté longtemps controversé après la mort de Etty, avec biographie de Farr 1958 décrivant comme « singulièrement inepte ».
Also exhibited at the 1832 Summer Exhibition along with Youth and Pleasure was The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate, seen as a riposte by Etty to his critics. Another of what Etty deemed “visions”, depicting a wholly imaginary scene rather than one from literature, mythology or history, The Destroying Angel shows an imaginary classical temple under attack from a destroying angel and a group of daemons. The human figures, intentionally painted in paler tones than usual to suggest death, each show their fear in a different way. Painted soon after his 1830 travels, it is thought that the heaped corpses and terrified crowds were directly inspired by events Etty had witnessed in Paris.
Contrairement à la jeunesse et le plaisir, la réponse critique à l’Ange était généralement destruction même favorable de ces critiques généralement hostiles à Etty. Le tableau a généré des comparaisons favorables à Michel-Ange et Rubens, et des premiers partisans de Etty William Carey (écrit sous le nom de « Ridolfi ») considérait comme une preuve de « la grâce rédemptrice et de l’esprit » de Etty. Le tableau a été explicitement considérée comme une renonciation par Etty de ses précédentes études de nus, avec le magazine Fraser a décrit comme « un sermon aux admirateurs [de Etty] … où il lui inflige la justice poétique sur ses propres dames gais et leurs galants, leurs ébats sont brisés en sur, et ils se sont emportèrent plus sans cérémonie, comme ce petit monsieur Don Juan, par des diables musculeux sombres prospectifs divers ».
Vers cette époque Etty a commencé à recevoir beaucoup de lettres non sollicitées de l’avocat riche Old Etonian Thomas Myers. Myers était un grand admirateur de Etty, et ses lettres suggèrent principalement des sujets littéraires, il se sentait Etty doit être peindre afin de faire appel à la noblesse; il écrit régulièrement entre Juillet 1832 et mai 1844. Bien excentrique et en grande partie incohérente (l’un de ses suggestions était pour Etty d’élever son profil en peignant des portraits nus des femmes de l’aristocratie), Etty semble avoir pris au moins quelques-unes des suggestions de Myers sérieusement.
n mid-1833 Etty began a portrait of the daughters of Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn, the long-serving Conservative Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire, shown Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball . Etty was then little-known for portraits, but had recently completed Elizabeth Potts, a portrait of the daughter of a family friend, which although poorly received by some critics was technically highly accomplished. He said at the time that he hoped his portrait of the Williams-Wynn children would be “one of my best”.
In February 1834, Etty became seriously ill, and was incapacitated for four months. Unable to paint, he exhibited only two already-completed paintings in the 1834 Summer Exhibition, Elizabeth Potts and The Cardinal. In June of that year he left London to convalesce, renting a cottage in York. Weak and unable to concentrate, Etty painted very little, and spend the next few months visiting friends and touring the sights of Yorkshire. Gradually regaining his health, he returned to London in December 1834, and resumed work on those paintings he had left incomplete on the onset of his illness.
Making up for lost time during illness, he completed several significant works over the next few months, and exhibited eight paintings at the 1835 Summer Exhibition. These included works now considered among his most significant. The Bridge of Sighs, Venice was based on sketches made by Etty during his visit to that city in the early 1820s. It shows the aftermath of an execution, as two men haul the body away to be thrown into the sea; it was described as “poetry on canvas” by William Macready, who bought it from Etty. Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball was the portrait of the daughters of Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn which Etty had begun in 1833. Etty had put far more work into this than was usual for a portrait, remarking to the Williams-Wynn family that he intended “to make a fine work of Art as well as a resemblance”. Showing Williams-Wynn’s daughters Charlotte and Mary in elaborate Italian-style costumes, it was critically well received as evidence that Etty was able to paint a major work that did not rely on nudity, as well as demonstrating that Etty could paint on commission for the elite, leading to further commissions. The Warrior Arming was a study of Godfrey de Bouillon. painted to satisfy the then-current fad for medievalism. Etty had recently developed an interest in collecting pieces of armour, and The Warrior Arming is a technically adept study of the effects of lights from multiple sources shining on polished armour.
Le plus controversé de 1835 présente RA de Etty était Vénus et ses satellites, une description de la toilette de Vénus. Cela a été condamné dans une grande partie de la presse pornographique, et a été décrit comme ayant une « absence totale de l’âme », avec l’observateur en particulier extrêmement hostile, appelant à l’archevêque de Canterbury de participer à châtiant Etty pour son manque de goût. En dépit de cette condamnation, Etty considère Vénus et ses satellites une de ses meilleures œuvres, et a vendu à Edward Pryce Rev. Owen pour la somme substantielle de 300 guinées (environ 28 000 £ en 2017 termes) en Août.
En Août 1835 Etty a passé un bref séjour dans le Shropshire, où il a livré Vénus et ses satellites à Owen. En route du retour, il a fait un détour à Manchester pour visiter une exposition d’art; alors qu’il a fait la connaissance du marchand de coton riche Daniel Grant.
Après l’attaque d’incendie criminel de Jonathan Martin à York Minster en 1829 a causé d’importants dégâts, il y avait des propositions par le doyen et le chapitre de saisir l’occasion de la destruction de restructurer l’intérieur du bâtiment. Etty était important dans l’effort de résister à la refonte et de restaurer le bâtiment à son état d’origine. Une campagne menée par Etty et d’autres sommités York a réussi, et les plans ont finalement été battu en Février 1831.
Au moment de l’incendie ministre, la Société de York (l’organisme responsable de l’administration locale) était déjà engagé dans un débat sur l’avenir des remparts de la ville. Les murs ne servaient plus de but pratique et étaient coûteux à entretenir, et avec la population de la ville augmente rapidement la ville est de plus en plus étroit et dangereux. Les portes de la ville ( « Bars ») étaient devenus un danger pour la santé publique étant donné le nombre de la population locale en les utilisant comme des toilettes, et le vol de la pierre pour d’autres travaux de construction avaient laissé une partie des murs dangereusement instable. Les Bars limités diligences, ce qui signifie York n’a pas pu capitaliser sur sa position stratégique à mi-chemin le long de la lucrative route Londres-Edimbourg. Face à la nécessité de supprimer les bidonvilles de la ville, en 1800, la Société a demandé l’autorisation du Parlement pour démolir les bars et bien des murs. En raison de l’opposition de York Minster le régime a été abandonné, mais en 1826 les barbacanes de quatre des portes avait été démoli. Face à cette campagne publique pour sauver les murs a été lancé en 1824, mais l’attention des deux côtés du débat a été détourné par le feu ministre. En 1828, Etty avait écrit à sa mère exprimant l’horreur des propositions de démolition, mais distrait par la nécessité de compléter Nymphe endormie et satyres n’a pas pu prendre toute mesure lui-même. En 1831 la Société avait décidé de démolir les barbacanes, mais de conserver et restaurer les murs. En 1828, Etty avait écrit à sa mère exprimant l’horreur des propositions de démolition, mais distrait par la nécessité de compléter Nymphe endormie et satyres n’a pas pu prendre toute mesure lui-même. En 1831 la Société avait décidé de démolir les barbacanes, mais de conserver et restaurer les murs. En 1828, Etty avait écrit à sa mère exprimant l’horreur des propositions de démolition, mais distrait par la nécessité de compléter Nymphe endormie et satyres n’a pas pu prendre toute mesure lui-même. En 1831 la Société avait décidé de démolir les barbacanes, mais de conserver et restaurer les murs.
En Février 1832 Etty a commencé une campagne d’écrire aux journaux locaux York exhortant la préservation des murs, et l’envoi de dons à diverses campagnes liées à leur rétention. Bien que certains journaux locaux soutenaient maintenant la conservation à la lumière des dégâts leur démolition ferait à l’industrie du tourisme, de nombreux habitants-dont la vie a été rendue plus difficile par la vie dans une ville fortifiée avec quelques points de hostile, est resté l’entrée aux campagnes de conservation. Une proposition en 1838 par le York et du chemin de fer du Nord Midland pour couper un passage voûté à travers les murs pour permettre l’accès à une gare ferroviaire dans les murs galvanisés Etty, et il a donné deux conférences sur la préservation des murs lors de visites à York en 1838-1839 , et a fait quatre tableaux des barreaux. Les paroles de Etty sont restées lettre morte et la voûte a été dûment coupé dans les murs, à sa grande consternation, bien que la station a été bientôt déplacé à son emplacement actuel en dehors des murs pour laisser passer la circulation des trains à la fois au nord et au sud. Alors que les murs ont finalement été enregistrés en 1889, plusieurs années après la mort de Etty, Etty est parfois crédité de leur salut. Il est ouvert à débattre de la façon significative sa part était. Certains auteurs estiment que ses interventions ont eu aucun impact et la préservation des murs était le résultat des décisions prises par la Société et de lobbying par les journaux locaux, tandis que d’autres estiment que la Société n’aurait pas pris ces décisions avaient Etty et d’autres dignitaires partageant les mêmes idées pas faire pression sur eux pour le faire. de nombreuses années après la mort de Etty, Etty est parfois crédité de leur salut. Il est ouvert à débattre de la façon significative sa part était. Certains auteurs estiment que ses interventions ont eu aucun impact et la préservation des murs était le résultat des décisions prises par la Société et de lobbying par les journaux locaux, tandis que d’autres estiment que la Société n’aurait pas pris ces décisions avaient Etty et d’autres dignitaires partageant les mêmes idées pas faire pression sur eux pour le faire. de nombreuses années après la mort de Etty, Etty est parfois crédité de leur salut. Il est ouvert à débattre de la façon significative sa part était. Certains auteurs estiment que ses interventions ont eu aucun impact et la préservation des murs était le résultat des décisions prises par la Société et de lobbying par les journaux locaux, tandis que d’autres estiment que la Société n’aurait pas pris ces décisions avaient Etty et d’autres dignitaires partageant les mêmes idées pas faire pression sur eux pour le faire.
En 1838, Etty a commencé le lobbying pour la création d’une école d’art à York. Il propose que le Hospitium de l’abbaye être utilisé à cet effet de St Mary, avec l’étage inférieur devenant un musée de la sculpture et l’étage supérieur devenant une salle de l’école et de l’exposition. Le système de Hospitium a été abandonné, mais l’École de Design York dûment ouvert sur un autre site en 1842. Bien que l’école a été créée par un artiste qui avait bâti sa réputation sur des nus, l’art nu est restée controversée. En 1847, suite à une plainte d’un élève d’un affichage de répliques de sculptures grecques antiques, « le maître a été demandé d’avoir le pénis de chacune des statues incriminées couper une procédure qui provoqua l’indignation des étudiants de sexe masculin et la remontrances de même les étudiants de dame ».
En 1836, l’architecte John Harper a organisé une petite exposition à York des œuvres d’artistes modernes, dont 11 peintures Etty. Cela comprenait la première projection publique de Vénus et ses Doves, qui avait été commandée par Daniel Grant. Bien que l’exposition même, il a rencontré rompit avec peu d’intérêt du public, et aucune autre retrospectives Etty ont eu lieu depuis quelques années. Harper a pris l’occasion d’acheter une famille de Etty de la forêt (également connue sous le nom Fleurs de la forêt), qui avait réussi à vendre à l’exposition d’été 1836. Une famille de la forêt illustre un passage du poème grec ancien Théogonie, traitant de l’âge d’or avant que l’humanité souffrances endurées, la misère ou la nécessité de travailler. Le soleil couchant en arrière-plan et l’homme en détournant les yeux de la femme et de l’enfant, et au lieu dans la distance,
A cette époque, Etty devenait religieusement en conflit. Bien qu’il ait été élevé comme un méthodiste, après l’émancipation des catholiques en 1829 Etty est devenu de plus en plus attirée sur le catholicisme romain. Bien qu’il se considérait comme « dans le cœur de cœur profondément et sincèrement de la foi ancienne », il a formellement refusé de se convertir au catholicisme en raison de préoccupations qu’il romprait sa famille et les amis, les soucis qu’il verront refuser l’accès aux bâtiments anglicans tels que York Minster et un dégoût pour le concept de la confession auriculaire (parlé). Il est resté étroitement associé au catholicisme tout au long de sa vie plus tard, et a été l’un des rares non-catholiques à assister à l’ouverture 1838 de la chapelle d’Auguste Pugin pour le collège St Mary, Oscott, au moment le plus important de la construction catholique romaine en Angleterre.
De plus en 1836 Etty a commencé à travailler sur les Sirènes et Ulysse, qu’il considérait parmi ses plus grandes œuvres, et qui est sa plus grande peinture survivante. La mesure 442,5 cm par 297 cm (14 pi 6 po de 9 pi 9 po) Sirènes était basée sur un passage de l’Odyssée d’Homère où les marins résister à la chanson irrésistible des Sirènes. Le thème et l’ampleur de la peinture ont probablement été suggéré à Etty par Thomas Myers, qui avait encouragé Etty à peindre des toiles très grandes. Le thème suggéré Myers a fait appel à Etty, qui a écrit plus tard qu’il illustre « l’importance de résister à voluptés ». Etty a fait tous les efforts possibles pour assurer le réalisme dans l’image, allant jusqu’à visiter les morgues d’esquisser des cadavres à divers stades de décomposition pour assurer l’exactitude des cadavres sur la plage.
When Etty completed Sirens in 1837, it was one of the main attractions at the 1837 Summer Exhibition, the first to be held in the Royal Academy’s new building in Trafalgar Square (now part of the National Gallery). The painting, with its juxtaposition of male and female nudity and decaying corpses, immediately divided opinion. Some critics considered it one of the finest artworks ever made, with The Gentleman’s Magazine particularly taken with the work, describing Sirens as “a historical work of the first class” and “by far the best that Mr. Etty ever painted”. Other critics were less kind; The Spectator considered it “a disgusting combination of voluptuousness and loathsome putridity—glowing in colour and wonderful in execution, but conceived in the worst possible taste”.
Peut-être en raison de sa taille, les sirènes et Ulysse n’a pas réussi à vendre à l’exposition d’été. En Octobre 1837 Etty a rencontré à nouveau Daniel Grant qui, sans avoir vu le tableau, offert £ 250 (environ 20 000 £ en termes d’aujourd’hui) pour Sirènes et Samson et Dalila, également présenté par Etty cette année. Etty, pauvres en affaires et toujours réticents à garder les peintures invendus dans son atelier, vendu deux tableaux à Grant pour bien au-dessous de leur valeur réelle. Etty avait utilisé une colle forte comme stabilisateur de peinture qui effilées lorsqu’elle est sèche, et dès qu’il était complet Sirènes a commencé à se détériorer. Il a été montré à l’exposition Trésors d’art 1857 mais considéré dans un trop mauvais état pour plus affichage public, et placé dans le stockage à long terme dans les archives du Manchester Institution royale et son successeur, la Manchester Art Gallery.
Après Sirènes, la production de Etty est resté aussi élevé que jamais, avec sept tableaux exposés à l’exposition d’été 1838, mais la qualité de son travail est généralement considéré comme ayant connu un déclin. En 1838 les critiques ont commencé à remarquer que les peintures de Etty ne sont plus des peintures inventive mais simplement remaniements de ses précédents, alors qu’en Juin de cette année William Makepeace Thackeray (sous le nom de plume de Michel-Ange Titmarsh) a écrit que » est, comme de grands hommes, paresseux , ou indifférent, peut-être, à propos de l’approbation publique ». En 1839, les critiques de Etty étaient élevés même dans les journaux et revues qui avait déjà défendu son travail. Un nouveau type de critique de Etty a également commencé à apparaître en 1839, d’une nouvelle génération dirigée par l’Union Art, qui a fait l’éloge des capacités techniques de Etty, mais a vu son choix de sujets comme hors de contact et anachronique,
From around this time onwards, while Etty still held to his belief that the purpose of art is to illustrate moral lessons, he began to abandon the literary, religious and mythological themes which had dominated his work. He began to paint still lifes, beginning with Pheasant and Peach (likely to be the painting now called Dead Pheasant and Fruit); in the 1840s he exhibited six in total, and painted many more. Etty was the first English painter to paint significant still lifes, which at the time were thought by the English a primarily Netherlandish form. Also for the first time, he began to paint a significant number of landscape paintings. Etty still continued to paint history paintings, but while he continued to produce highly acclaimed reworkings of his previous pictures, those works on fresh topics were generally poorly received. Etty’s decline in quality can possibly be attributed in part to London art dealers; from 1835 dealer Richard Colls had become increasingly close to Etty, and by 1844 had a near-monopoly on his work. As the importance of the landed gentry to the art market declined, the new purchasers of art were industrialists; generally lacking in a classical education and with little interest in Old Masters, they preferred to buy works by then-contemporary artists such as Etty, and relied on dealers to advise them.
En mai 1840, Etty a finalement fait le voyage à Bruxelles et à Anvers qu’il avait été contraint par la révolution d’abandonner en 1830. Il avait l’intention d’étudier les œuvres de Rubens, mais la brièveté de sa tournée en compagnie de Betsy Etty il a visité Ostende , Bruges, Anvers, Bruxelles, Aachen, Cologne, Bonn et Rotterdam au cours de dix jours intentionnée il avait peu de temps pour l’étude. L’année suivante, il est retourné à Anvers et Malines pour une visite plus de visiter la cathédrale Saint-Rombaut et d’étudier les collections importantes de peintures de Rubens dans les deux villes. Sur ce second voyage, il a visité deux fois un monastère trappiste en dehors d’Anvers, de passer la nuit sur une visite, et a acheté une habitude trappiste; il a également acheté une habitude capucin d’un monastère à Bruges. Ces acquisitions ont incité des peintures sur des thèmes monastiques au cours des années suivantes.
Despite a perceived decline in his work’s quality, the 1840s were the most financially successful of Etty’s career. His income increased with further opportunities for patronage from a growing industrial class, and with few costs and all his earlier debts cleared, Etty was in a position to invest money for the first time. By 1841 Etty had around £300 invested, rising to £8500 in 1845 and £17,000 in 1849. He continued to have difficulty forming relationships with any woman other than Betsy Etty, writing in his diary in 1843 that “being in sound Mind and Body I declare it to be my Firm Intention NEVER TO MARRY. In which resolution I pray GOD to help me that I may devote myself purely to my Art, my Country, and my GOD!”
In May 1843, Etty was one of eight artists chosen by Prince Albert to paint frescoes on the theme of Milton’s Comus for a new pavilion being built in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Etty was unhappy with his selection, as fresco was a medium with which he had no experience, but reluctantly did so, choosing to paint on the theme of Circe and the Sirens Three. The result was a disaster. Etty found himself unable to retouch or alter his existing work, as any freshly applied paint would flake away from the existing paint layer, and the lunette shape of the panel left Etty with a large empty space above the central figures. Etty’s fresco was deemed unsalvageable, and although he offered to paint a replacement on the theme of Hesperus he was rejected, and William Dyce was commissioned to paint a replacement fresco. Etty was paid only a token £40 fee.
The perceived lack of respect shown to one of England’s leading artists led to some outcry, and attacks in the press upon the then very unpopular Albert; William Makepeace Thackeray wrote in 1845: “Think of the greatest patronage in the world giving forty pounds for pictures worth four hundred—condescending to buy works from humble men who could not refuse, and paying for them below their value! Think of august powers and principalities ordering the works of such a great artist as Etty to be hacked out of the palace-wall! That was a slap in the face to every artist in England.”
In August 1843, during a break from his work on the fresco, Etty made what was to prove his final overseas journey. Since 1839 he had been planning a series of monumental paintings of Joan of Arc, and he wanted to visit places associated with her. Setting out on 16 August he spent two weeks touring sites in Rouen, Paris and Orléans associated with her life. Unlike Etty’s disastrous prior visits to France, this journey passed without incident, and he found that he actually was coming to enjoy certain aspects of French living.
In the same year, Etty painted the first version of Musidora: The Bather ‘At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed’, an illustration from the poem Summer by James Thomson and arguably Etty’s last history painting painted while he still had all his powers. Musidora shows a scene in which the titular character, having removed the last of her clothes, steps into “the lucid coolness of the flood” to “bathe her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream”, unknowing that she is being watched by her suitor Damon. Etty’s composition is shown from the viewpoint of Damon; by so doing Etty aimed to induce the same reactions in the viewer as Damon’s dilemma as described by Thomson; that of whether to enjoy the spectacle despite knowing it to be inappropriate, or to follow the accepted morality of the time and look away, in what art historian Sarah Burnage has described as “a titillating moral test for spectators to both enjoy and overcome”. Musidora met with almost universal acclaim, compared favourably to Titian and Rembrandt, and described by The Critic as “a preeminent work” and “the triumph of the British school”.
By the time Musidora was exhibited, Etty’s health was in serious decline. Suffering severe asthma, it was not unusual for passers-by to accuse him of drunkenness as he made his way wheezing through the London streets, and he was beginning to plan his retirement from polluted London to his beloved York. Abandoning the smaller paintings which kept him profitable, he strived to complete his Joan of Arc triptych before his health gave out. This was on a huge scale, 28 ft (8.5 m) in total width and 9 ft 9 in (3 m) high; the three pictures from left to right depicted Joan devoting herself to the service of God and her country, Joan scattering the enemies of France, and Joan dying a martyr.
Etty sold the triptych for the huge sum of 2500 guineas (about £220,000 in 2017 terms) to dealer Richard Colls and the engraver C. W. Wass. Colls and Wass had ambitious plans to recoup their money by selling engravings of the pictures and by taking the paintings on a tour of Britain and Europe. The paintings proved less popular than expected. Very few engravings were sold and the tours did not take place; Wass declared bankruptcy in 1852. The paintings were separated, and sold on to a series of buyers, with the third panel fetching just 7 1⁄2 guineas in 1893 as Etty’s popularity continued to wane. By the 1950s all three panels of Joan of Arc were believed lost or destroyed, although some preliminary studies survive.
Following the completion of Joan of Arc, Etty’s health continued to deteriorate. He continued to paint and exhibit, but his retirement plans grew firmer. In April 1846 he bought a house in Coney Street, central York, as a retirement home, and in December 1847 he formally resigned from the Council of the Royal Academy. Following structural alterations to give him a better view of the river, Etty moved into the house in June 1848, completing the move in September of that year, although he retained his London apartments. His move from London caused some consternation among that city’s models, who were losing one of their most regular customers, as well as concerns from Etty who was worried that working with nude models might cause a scandal in York.
Il a continué à exposer, envoyer sept peintures à l’exposition d’été de cette année-là, mais ils ont attiré peu d’intérêt, même si le manque de nudes a été applaudie par certains auteurs. A cette époque, le legs de Robert Vernon de sa collection à la nation avait conduit à onze tableaux Etty en cours d’affichage public dans les caves de la National Gallery. À la fin de 1848, il a écrit une brève autobiographie, publiée l’année suivante dans The Journal Art, dans lequel il se défendait farouchement contre les accusations de pornographie qui lui avait été nivelé tout au long de sa vie:
As a worshipper of beauty, whether it be seen in a weed, a flower, or in that most interesting form to humanity, lovely woman, in intense admiration of it and its Almighty Author, if at any time I have forgotten the boundary line that I ought not to have passed, and tended to voluptuousness, I implore His pardon; I have never wished to seduce others from that path and practice of virtue, which alone leads to happiness here and hereafter; and if in any of my pictures an immoral sentiment has been aimed at, I consent it should be burnt; but I never recollect being actuated in painting my pictures by such sentiment. That the female form, in its fulness, beauty of colour, exquisite rotundity, may, by being portrayed in its nudity, awake like nature in some degree an approach to passion, I must allow, but where no immoral sentiment is intended, I affirm that the simple undisguised naked figure is innocent. “To the pure in heart all things are pure.”
In 1849, the Royal Society of Arts decided to organise a retrospective exhibition of Etty’s work, the first since the minor York exhibition of 1836. Etty agreed only on condition that all nine of his large works were included. The three Joan of Arc paintings were in London and easily accessible, and the Royal Scottish Academy was happy to lend The Combat, Benaiah and the Judith triptych, but the Royal Manchester Institution was deeply reluctant to lend The Sirens and Ulysses in light of concerns that transporting it would damage the fragile paintwork further. They were eventually persuaded to lend the piece after Etty and some of his friends visited Manchester to personally request they release it. The exhibition duly went ahead from 9 June to 25 August 1849, bringing together 133 Etty paintings for the first time; Etty hoped that it would raise public awareness of his abilities, writing to his friend Rev. Isaac Spencer “Please God, I will give them a taste of my quality”. The exhibition was well received and well attended; even Etty’s old adversaries at the Morning Chronicle recommending that readers “lose no time in visiting this collection”. However, it was a financial disaster for the Royal Society of Arts, faced with the cost of transporting large numbers of delicate artworks from around the country.
During the exhibition Etty suffered a serious bout of rheumatic fever. Exhausted by illness and the stress of the exhibition, when the exhibition was complete he returned to York in very poor health. On 3 November 1849 he suffered a serious asthma attack, thought to have been made worse by his neglecting to wear his flannel undershirt the night before. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and by 10 November he was bedridden. On Tuesday 13 November, watching the sun set over the River Ouse, he was heard to say “Wonderful! Wonderful! This death!” Later that night, Betsy Etty wrote to Joseph Gillott that “Uncle paid the last debt to nature at 1⁄4 past Eight oclock tonight. I do not know what to do. I am almost broken hearted. I have lost my best friend. I now not what to do. I can say no more.”
Etty had planned for a burial in York Minster, but neglected to cover the necessary costs in his will. With Yorkshire local government in political and financial chaos in the wake of the bankruptcy of George Hudson, there was no political will to organise a public subscription or to waive the fees, and as a consequence Etty was buried in the churchyard of St Olave’s Church, his local parish church. On 6 May 1850 the contents of his studio were auctioned, in a total of 1034 lots including around 900 paintings; some of these paintings were incomplete studies later completed by other artists to increase their value. In the years following his death Etty’s work became highly collectable, his works fetching huge sums on resale. He continued to be regarded as a pornographer by some, with Charles Robert Leslie observing in 1850 “It cannot be doubted that the voluptuous treatment of his subjects, in very many instances, recommended them more powerfully than their admirable art; while we may fully believe that he himself, thinking and meaning no evil, was not aware of the manner in which his works were regarded by grosser minds”.
Six months after William’s death, Betsy Etty married chemist Stephen Binnington, a distant relation of the Etty family. She moved into his house in Haymarket, and some time after his death moved to 40 Edwardes Square, where she died in 1888 at the age of 87.
While Etty did have admirers, the patchy quality of his later work meant that he never acquired the circle of imitators and students that could have led to him being seen as the founder of the English realist movement, now considered to have begun in 1848 with the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, two of the three founders of the Pre-Raphaelites, were heavily influenced by Etty’s early works but recoiled from his later style. Holman Hunt recollected that “in my youth had lost the robustness he once had the paintings of his advanced age cloyed the taste by their sweetness”. Millais had consciously modelled his style on Etty, and his works prior to the formation of the Pre-Raphaelites are very similar in composition, but after 1848 the only similarity in style is the use of colour. As Pre-Raphaelitism waned Millais’s style became more varied, and some of his later work such as The Knight Errant owes a strong debt to Etty’s influence.
Au cours de sa vie Etty avait acquis adeptes tels que les peintres irlandais William Mulready et Daniel Maclise, mais ont rejeté la préoccupation de Etty avec nudes. Mulready peint des nus mais il est devenu plus connu pour les peintures de genre domestiques, alors que Maclise a choisi de se spécialiser dans plus de peintures à l’histoire traditionnelle et expose une seule œuvre nue dans sa carrière. L’un des rares peintres qui, consciemment tenté de poursuivre le style de Etty après sa mort était William Edward Frost, qui avait été une connaissance de Etty depuis 1825. Au début des années 1830, le gel peint à la commission pour Thomas Potts (dont 1833 Commission de Etty pour peindre son fille portrait d’Elizabeth avait été la première commission de portrait importante de Etty), puis a été commandée sur la recommandation de Etty peindre un portrait de cousin de Thomas Etty Bodley. Avec succès le gel imitait Etty tout au long de sa carrière, dans la mesure où ses études de figures et Etty de sont souvent attribués erronément à l’autre. Bien que le gel est finalement devenu un académicien royal en 1870, cette fois-ci par le style de Etty de la peinture était mal tombée de la mode.
peinture victorienne a connu des changements radicaux, et les années 1870 le réalisme de Etty et préraphaélites avait cédé la place aux idées du Mouvement esthétique, abandonnant les traditions du conte et moralisatrice en faveur des travaux de peinture destinés à l’attrait esthétique plutôt que pour leur récit ou sujet. Bien que le mouvement esthétique a finalement conduit à une brève renaissance de la peinture d’histoire, ces œuvres étaient dans un style très différent de Etty de. La nouvelle génération de peintres d’histoire comme Edward Burne-Jones, Lawrence Alma-Tadema et Frederic Leighton a cherché à représenter la passivité, plutôt que le dynamisme vu dans les œuvres précédentes dépeignant le monde classique. A la fin du 19ème siècle, la valeur de toutes les œuvres de Etty était tombé en dessous de leurs prix d’origine. Comme le 20ème siècle a commencé,
En 1911, la ville de York a reconnu tardivement Etty. Une statue de Etty par GW Milburn a été dévoilé le 1er Février en dehors de la York Art Gallery, et une rétrospective de 164 peintures Etty a eu lieu à la galerie en dépit de l’opposition de certains des descendants de Etty qui a refusé de prêter des œuvres pour elle. William Wallace Hargrove, propriétaire du Herald York, a prononcé un discours rappelant ses souvenirs de savoir Etty. En dehors de York, Etty est restée généralement peu connue, la majorité de ces galeries tenant ses œuvres, autres que la Lady Lever Art Gallery, le Russell-Cotes Musée et Anglesey Abbey, tendant à les maintenir en stock. expositions Etty mineures à Londres en 1936 et 1938 ont eu peu d’impact, et même une exposition de 30 peintures Etty en 1948 pour marquer la réouverture de la galerie d’art York et une autre exposition York de 108 peintures de l’année suivante à l’occasion du centenaire de sa mort. En 2001-02 cinq tableaux ont été inclus dans l’emblème de la Tate Britain Etty exposé: L’exposition nue victorienne, qui a beaucoup contribué à rehausser le profil de Etty et établi Etty comme « le premier artiste britannique à peindre le nu à la fois sérieux et cohérence ». La restauration des Sirènes et Ulysse, achevé en 2010, a conduit à un intérêt accru pour Etty, et en 2011-12 une grande exposition des œuvres de Etty a eu lieu à la York Art Gallery. La Galerie d’art York continue de détenir la plus grande collection des œuvres de Etty. L’exposition nue victorienne, qui a beaucoup contribué à rehausser le profil de Etty et établi Etty comme « le premier artiste britannique à peindre le nu à la fois sérieux et cohérence ». La restauration des Sirènes et Ulysse, achevé en 2010, a conduit à un intérêt accru pour Etty, et en 2011-12 une grande exposition des œuvres de Etty a eu lieu à la York Art Gallery. La Galerie d’art York continue de détenir la plus grande collection des œuvres de Etty. L’exposition nue victorienne, qui a beaucoup contribué à rehausser le profil de Etty et établi Etty comme « le premier artiste britannique à peindre le nu à la fois sérieux et cohérence ». La restauration des Sirènes et Ulysse, achevé en 2010, a conduit à un intérêt accru pour Etty, et en 2011-12 une grande exposition des œuvres de Etty a eu lieu à la York Art Gallery. La Galerie d’art York continue de détenir la plus grande collection des œuvres de Etty.