Standing Female Nude from Behind, William Etty R.A. (1787 – 1849)

William Etty R.A. (1787 – 1849)

Standing female nude from behind.

Oil on board.

67 cm (26 ¼ in.) high.

48 cm (19 in.) wide.

Provenance

C. Baxter, 18th November 1850.

Private collection, north-east England, since 1940.

Inscribed

C. Baxter…18 Nov 50.

William Etty R.A. (1787 – 1849) is considered to have been amongst the finest British artists working in the first half of the nineteenth century. Etty achieved international renown, but had strong links to the English county of Yorkshire. Etty is perhaps York’s greatest artist-son, who did much to save its much-loved ancient city walls from destruction and retired there in 1848. After a brief spell apprenticed to a letter-press printer in Hull, William Etty moved down to London in 1805.

He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1808, after forging links with its enigmatic President, Sir Thomas Lawrence, whom he had been apprenticed to throughout the previous year. The artistic practices that Etty developed at the Royal Academy had significant classical foundations. This took the form of a deep-reverence for the finest examples of sculpture surviving from antiquity and the dedicated academic study of the male and female nude.

His fervent devotion to the life-class at the Royal Academy and later in his own studio is well-known and his restlessness to capture the vitality of the human form from the live study of it, never ceased. However, his desire to learn the lessons of antiquity is evident from the sketches he made in Rome circa 1822 and before, in 1806, at Giovanni Battista Gianelli’s plaster-cast shop on Cock’s Lane, London.

These activities were in accordance with the pedagogical zeitgeist of the European Academies and is not, in itself, extraordinary. However, what set him apart from his peers at this time, was the particular strain of classicism which he developed, for it was infused with a sensitivity, sensuality and a romanticism. He painted with a more romantic abandon, inspired more by the bravura and virtuosity of Old Master works by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Rubens, revelling in expressive brush strokes and bold use of colour.

The modish, restrained creation of pure, divine forms was rejected in favour of passion and a profane explosion of flesh. It is largely for this reason that his paintings were highly controversial throughout his life-time. Like some of the greatest works of western art, they challenged contemporary tastes and social-mores, even the very definition of what art was, or could be.

Many critics were appalled by his painting’s flagrant display of the female nude[1] and lambasted the sensuality in which his renderings of real human flesh were splashed across the canvas. Yet within the artistic community of the period, his work was highly celebrated and he was elected a Royal Academician in 1828, ahead of the more polite and pastoral John Constable (1776 – 1837).

Related Literature

Anon., ‘William Etty, Esq, R.A.’, Arnold’s Magazine of the Fine Arts, 3: 4 February 1834, pp. 289–91.

Arts Council of Great Britain, An Exhibition of Paintings by William Etty, London, 1955.

B. Bailey, William Etty’s Nudes, Bedford, 1974.

J. Biggins, Etty and York, York, 1949.

I. Bignamini and M. Postle, The Artist’s Model: Its role in British art from Lely to Etty, Nottingham, 1991.

S. Burnage, M. Hallett and L. Turner, eds., William Etty Art and Controversy, York, 2011.

W. Camidge, The Poet-Painter of York: William Etty, York, 1899.

W. Carey, Ridolfi’s Critical Letters on the Style of William Etty, Esq. R.A. and on his Destroying Angel, Inflicting Divine Vengeance on the Wicked: Reprinted from the Yorkshire Gazette of October and November 1832: with Additional Notices, Referring to the Royal Academy of London, The Scotch Academy, and the System of Hostile Criticism, Nottingham, 1833.

G. Curr, ‘Who Saved York’s Walls?’, York Historian, vol. 5, 1984, pp. 25–38.

W. Etty, ‘Autobiography of William Etty R.A.’, The Art Journal, February 1849, pp. 13, 37–40.

D. Farr, William Etty, London, 1958.

A. Gilchrist, Life of William Etty R.A., 2 vols., London, 1855.

W. Gaunt and F. Gordon Roe, Etty and the Nude: The art of William Etty R.A. 1787–1849, Leigh-on-Sea, 1943.

A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, 8 vols., London: Henry Graves and Co Ltd and George Bell and Sons, 1905–06, pp. 279-80.

A. Graves, The British Institution 1806–1867, 1909.

R. Green, ‘William Etty’, The Dictionary of Art, vol. 10, London and New York, 1996, pp. 645–47.

P.G. Hammerton, ‘Etty’, Portfolio, vol. 6, January 1875, pp. 88–91, 142–44, 149–51, 172–76, 180–84.

C. R. Leslie, ‘Lecture on the works of the late W. Etty Esq. R.A.,’ Athenaeum, vol. 1170, 30 March 1850, pp. 351–52.

W. Cosmo Monkhouse, Pictures by William Etty with descriptions and a biographical sketch of the Painter, London, 1874.

M. Postle and W. Vaughan, The Artist’s Model from Etty to Spencer, London, 1999.

L. Robinson, Etty: The Life and Art Jefferson, North Carolina and London, 2007.

[1] Sarah Burnage,’ Painting the Nude and ‘Inflicting Divine Vengeance on the Wicked’, in S. Burnage, M. Hallett and L. Turner (eds.), William Etty: Art and Controversy, York, 2011, 31- 44.

Dimensions

67 cm high, 48 cm wide

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Stock number

P ~ 159