27 Works, Today, March 10th. is artist William Etty's day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #068

William Etty (1787–1849)

The Storm, c. 1829–1830

Oil on canvas

H 91 x W 104.5 cm

Manchester Art Gallery

Dramatic storm at sea, based on Psalm 22 of the Old Testament. The semi-nude figures of a man and woman cling to one another as their vessel is thrown about by the tempestuous sea. The man kneels with his left arm wrapped around the waist of the woman, and his right arm holds onto an oar; the woman leans towards the man with both arms wrapped around his neck and chest; the pair turn their heads towards an enormous wave rising above.The painting uses shades of brown and white to depict the storm. More on this painting

William Etty RA (10 March 1787 – 13 November 1849) was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes. Born in York, he left school at the age of 12 to become an apprentice printer in Hull. He completed his apprenticeship seven years later and moved to London, where in 1807 he joined the Royal Academy Schools. There he studied under Thomas Lawrence and trained by copying works by other artists. Etty earned respect at the Royal Academy of Arts for his ability to paint realistic flesh tones, but had little commercial or critical success in his first few years in London.

William Etty (1787–1849)

Hero Waiting for Leander

Oil on panel

H 60 x W 49 cm

Boston Guildhall

Hero and Leander is the Greek myth relating the story of Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont, and Leander, a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to spend time with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way.

Succumbing to Leander's soft words and to his argument that Aphrodite, as the goddess of love and sex, would scorn the worship of a virgin, Hero "allowed" him to make love to her—that is, she did not refuse any longer. Their trysts lasted through a warm summer. But one stormy winter night, the waves tossed Leander in the sea and the breezes blew out Hero's light; Leander lost his way and drowned. When Hero saw his dead body, she threw herself over the edge of the tower to her death to be with him. More on this painting

William Etty (1787–1849)

The Parting of Hero and Leander, c. 1827

Oil on canvas

H 86.4 x W 86.4 cm

Tate

William Etty (1787–1849)

Hero, Having Thrown herself from the Tower at the Sight of Leander Drowned, Dies on his Body, c. 1829

Oil on canvas

H 75 x W 92.5 cm

Tate

In 1811 two of his paintings were accepted for the Telemachus Rescues Antiope from the Fury of the Wild Boar exhibition at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and Sappho (See below) at the British Institution. The latter sold for the respectable sum of 25 guineas (about £1,800 in 2021 terms. Although from now on Etty had 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.

William Etty (British, 1787–1849)

Sappho

Oil on board

27.3 x 23.2 cm. (10.7 x 9.1 in.)

Private collection

Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho's poetry was lyric poetry, and she is best known for her poems about love. 

Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; the names of two of them are mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570.

Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the nine lyric poets deemed major by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Today, Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary, and her works have continued to influence other writers up until the modern day. Outside of academic circles, she is perhaps best known as a symbol of same-sex desire, particularly between women. More on Sappho

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".

William Etty (British, 1787–1849)

A BACCHANALIAN REVEL

Oil on canvas

112 x 143.5 cm.; 40 x 56½ in. 

Private collection

Bacchanalia,  also called Dionysia, in Greco-Roman religion, any of the several festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus), the wine god. They probably originated as rites of fertility gods. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy, the Bacchanalia were at first held in secret, attended by women only, on three days of the year. Later, admission was extended to men, and celebrations took place as often as five times a month. The reputation of these festivals as orgies led in 186 bc to a decree of the Roman Senate that prohibited the Bacchanalia throughout Italy, except in certain special cases. Nevertheless, Bacchanalia long continued in the south of Italy. More on Bacchanalia

William Etty, R.A. (1787-1849)

Pluto carrying off Proserpine

Oil on canvas

51 ½ x 77 3/8 in. (130.8 x 196.5 cm.)

Private collection

Pluto Carrying off Proserpine was a popular mythological subject and one which had been in Etty’s mind for some years.  Early in 1835 he had written to the dealer Colls; “There is a subject I hope to paint, before I am much older…It is one I have often thought on, lately indeed, composed en groupe: Pluto carrying off Proserpine”.  Etty went on to remark that this composition offered “beauty, action, masculine vigour; - landscape, sky, motion, agitation, flowers, and freshness; - the consternation of her attendant Nymphs scattering flowers in their fear and flight; matter enough to make a fine picture”.  He made a number of studies of the anatomy of horses, and in January 1839 set about drawing the outline of the composition in charcoal.  He finally exhibited the work at the end of the month.  In the same exhibition Etty exhibited another classical subject, Diana and Endymion (no. 195), but no work by the artist was ever seriously to rival what Etty clearly thought was his masterpiece. Private collection

Proserpina was in Sicily, at the Pergusa Lake near Enna, where she was playing with some nymphs and collecting flowers, when Pluto came out from the volcano Etna with four black horses named Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus and Alastor.[12] He abducted her in order to marry her and live with her in the underworld of which he was the ruler.

Her mother Ceres, also known as Demeter, the goddess of agriculture or of the Earth, went looking for her across all of the world, and all in vain. She was unable to find anything but a small belt floating upon a little lake made from the tears of the nymphs. In her desperation, Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, bestowing a malediction on Sicily. Ceres refused to return to Mount Olympus and started walking the Earth, creating a desert with each step.

Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto (Jupiter's brother) to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds, because those who have eaten the food of the dead could not return to the world of the living. This meant that she would have to live six months of each year with him, and stay the rest with her mother. This story was undoubtedly meant to illustrate the changing of the seasons: when Ceres welcomes her daughter back in the spring the earth blossoms, and when Proserpina must be returned to her husband it withers. More on Proserpine

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.

At the 1820 Summer Exhibition, Etty exhibited two paintings: Drunken Barnaby and The Coral Finder: Venus and her Youthful Satellites Arriving at the Isle of Paphos (See below). 

William Etty  (1787–1849)

The Coral Finder: Venus and her Youthful Satellites, c. 1820-1848

Oil on canvas

74.4 × 98.58 cm

Private collection

The Coral Finder is strongly inspired by Titian, and depicts Venus Victrix lying nude in a golden boat, surrounded by scantily clad attendants. It was Etty's first use of the combination of nude figures and mythological or literary references for which he was to become famous.

Sir Francis Freeling admired The Coral Finder at its exhibition, and learning that it had been sold he commissioned Etty to paint a similar picture on a more ambitious scale. 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 (See below).

William Etty  (1787–1849) 

Cleopatra's Arrival in Cilicia or The Triumph of Cleopatra, c. 1821

Oil on canvas

Height: 106.5 cm (41.9 in); Width: 132.5 cm (52.1 in)

Lady Lever Art Gallery, Merseyside, England

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.

In 1823–24 Etty made an extended trip to study in France and Italy, and returned a highly accomplished artist. His monumental 304 by 399 cm (10 ft by 13 ft 1 in) 1825 painting The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished (See below) was extremely well-received, and Etty began to be spoken of as one of England's finest painters.

William Etty  (1787–1849)

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, c. 1825

Oil on canvas

Height: 304 cm (119.6 in); Width: 399 cm (13 ft)

Scottish National Gallery

This picture was one of Etty’s first large-scale history paintings (304 x 399cm). In 1825, he received widespread fame when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It shows a defeated warrior as the victor prepares to kill him, and a woman clutching his waist, pleading for the vanquished warrior’s life. She represents the beauty and magnificence of mercy. Etty was sometimes accused of unnecessarily exposing flesh in his pictures for immoral amusement, however he claimed that he used nudes as a way of expressing lofty morals. In 1831, this much admired painting was bought by the newly founded Royal Scottish Academy to encourage contemporary Scottish artists to imitate Etty’s practice of grand history painting. It was presented to the National Galleries of Scotland in 1910. More on this painting

William Etty  (1787–1849)

Engraving from The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished (1825), c. 1848

Ink on paper

York Art Gallery 

Engraving by G. T. Doo, 1848, based on a reworked version of the painting completed by Etty in 1845

William Etty  (1787–1849)

Venus of Urbino (after Titian), c. 1823

Oil on canvas

Height: 122.3 cm (48.1 in); Width: 169 cm (66.5 in)

Royal Scottish Academy

Although the Uffizi management were hostile to this proposal, to paint a copy of Titian's Venus of Urbino 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.

On occasion he would re-use elements from Cleopatra in his later paintings, such as the black soldier who squats on the side of the ship in Cleopatra and who also sits watching dancers in his 1828 The World Before the Flood (See below).

William Etty  (1787–1849)

The World Before the Flood, c. 1828

Oil on canvas

Height: 202.3 cm (79.6 in); Width: 140 cm (55.1 in)

Southampton City Art Gallery

The World Before the Flood is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton; a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, a symbol of the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves. More on this painting

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.

Female Nude Standing in the William Etty National Trust, Treasurer's House, York	Standing Female Nude William Etty Scarborough Art Gallery	Nude William Etty Museums Sheffield
The Toilet of Venus William Etty Williamson Art Gallery & Museum	Female Nude William Etty York Art Gallery	A Bather William Etty (1787–1849) York Art Gallery
Female Nude William Etty (1787–1849) York Art Gallery	Head and Shoulders of a Woman William Etty (1787–1849) York Art Gallery	Life Study William Etty (1787–1849) Sheffield Hallam University
Nude William Etty (1787–1849) Museums Sheffield	Andromeda and Perseus William Etty (1787–1849) Manchester Art Gallery	The Mourner William Etty (1787–1849) Nottingham City Museums & Galleries

An extremely shy man, Etty rarely socialised and never married. From 1824 until his death he lived with his niece Betsy (Elizabeth Etty). Even in London he retained a keen interest in his native York, and was instrumental in the establishment of the town's first art school and the campaign to preserve York city walls. While he never formally converted from his Methodist faith, he was deeply attached to the Roman Catholic Church and was one of the few non-Catholics to attend the 1838 opening of Augustus Pugin's chapel for St Mary's College, Oscott, at that time England's most important Roman Catholic building.

William Etty  (1787–1849)

Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', c. 1846

Oil on canvas

Height: 65.1 cm (25.6 in); Width: 50.2 cm (19.7 in)

Tate Britain

Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', also known as The Bather, is a name given to four nearly identical oil paintings on canvas by Etty. The paintings illustrate a scene from James Thomson's 1727 poem Summer in which a young man accidentally sees a young woman bathing naked, and is torn between his desire to look and his knowledge that he ought to look away. The scene was popular with English artists as it was one of the few legitimate pretexts to paint nudes at a time when the display and distribution of nude imagery was suppressed. More on this painting

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. By the end of the 19th century the value of all of his works had fallen below their original prices, and outside his native York he remained little known throughout the 20th century. Etty's inclusion in Tate Britain's landmark Exposed: The Victorian Nude exhibition in 2001–02, the high-profile restoration of his The Sirens and Ulysses in 2010 and a major retrospective of his work at the York Art Gallery in 2011–12 led to renewed interest in his work. More on William Etty

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