William Etty

William Etty ( born March 10, 1787 York, † November 13, 1849 ) was an English Romantic painter who was known for his nudes.

Life

Early years

William Etty was born in 1787 in York, the son of a former miller, who brought it in London as a baker with his own specially developed flavored bread to some wealth. At age eleven, William Etty went out with his parents and began his drawing training. After seven years, he then moved to London to continue the training. When his uncle, who was also active as a painter, Etty started painting from nature studies, based on models, but also with the copies of earlier works to train his style. A picture named Cupid and Psyche, he showed the painter John Opie, who then proposed him for the Royal Academy of Arts.

Education and qualifications

William Etty began to study painting at the Royal Academy of Arts around 1807 and was among other things a student of John Flaxman and John Opie. Especially Thomas Lawrence, where he worked for a year, influenced him greatly. Was financed by the study of his uncle, and his classmates were among some painters who brought it later became world famous, including David Wilkie, John Constable, Benjamin Robert Haydon and William Collins. Etty quickly developed his own style, but the success was in the early years. In 1811 his picture Telemachus rescuing Antiope was inducted into the Gallery of the Academy, but there was little attention. Until 1816, he worked steadily at his style and slowly got a name in the art scene. To expand his knowledge of art, Etty decided in 1816 to go on a trip to Italy. However, of this he returned to have come after three months without further back in the country as to Florence.

In 1820 he was able to pull the image Coral - finders, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy some attention to his work, reinforced by Cleopatra's arrival in Cilicia in the following year. From 1822 to 1824 he toured several European cities including Paris, Florence, Rome and Venice. On the journey he copied works in the Louvre and other museums, especially Titian, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Peter Paul Rubens and produced numerous studies with naked women who were to become the main element of his historical pictures later. He remained the Italian style, especially the Venetian, faithful even later.

Success years

1824 was Etty associate member of the Royal Academy, mainly because of the masterpiece Pandora Crowned by the Seasons, which he bought from his old teacher Lawrence. Shortly after this, Etty from about 130 of his paintings at the Academy. In the following years he created with The Combat of his most famous images. In 1828 he became a full member and from that point on, he had a steady and uninterrupted success with his paintings.

In 1830 he came again to a trip, but only came to Paris, where just raged the July Revolution. He returned from here on the fastest way back to England. During the next 10 years he painted constantly successful images and was also an attentive teacher at the Academy. In 1840 he traveled to the Netherlands to view the masterpieces of Rubens in the original in the exhibitions of the churches and public museums. After France he traveled in 1843 one more time to collect impressions for his planned work Joan of Arc, which with 2,500 British pounds was his most expensive work later.

1848 William Etty returned back to his hometown to live there for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1849, he still had the opportunity to arrange a solo exhibition at the Royal Society of Arts, in which a large part of his paintings was exhibited. On 13 November of the same year he died in York.

Gallery

Candaules, king of Lydia, his naked wife shows the hidden Gyges

Study of Pandora

Bacchante with Tambourine

Cupid and Psyche

Mira

Source

• Biography and images
• Alexander Gilchrist: Life of William Etty, RA Vol I Publisher: David Bogue, London 1855