William Etty was born on at York on 10 March 1787. He was the seventh child of a baker and miller. In accordance with the wishes of his father, he served seven years of apprenticeship to a Hull printer. He was, however, enabled to pursue his studies in painting through the financial support of his uncle William Etty, who in 1806 invited him to London. On 15 January 1807, young William entered the Royal Academy Schools, studying under Henry Fuseli. His uncle also paid 100 guineas for him to study privately for a year under Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose influence for some time dominated Etty’s art. He copied a great deal from the Old Masters in the National Gallery and constantly attended the Life School of the Academy, even after he had become an Academician. He studied in Paris in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He also visited Belgium to study the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Initially Etty’s submissions to the Academy Exhibitions were consistently rejected. In the period 1822-24 he travelled in Italy and from his studies of the Venetian Old Masters, acquired that excellence in colour for which his works are chiefly known. His perseverence then paid off. His Pandora Crowned by the Seasons (1824) was not only exhibited, but gained him election as ARA in November that year. The picture was bought by his old tutor, now Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA. Thereafter, Etty exhibited prolifically at the RA, showing some 136 paintings in total, and building a reputation as a figure painter specialising in the nude. Etty was elected RA in 1828. Much of his success was due to his large history paintings. The Classical or biblical subject-matter of such works gave Etty the ideal pretext for painting the nude. His choice of such themes made nudity more acceptable and his public recognition and success was achieved in the face of vitriolic censure from the press which accused him of indecency in his work. (His Study of the Male Nude may be seen above).  Etty did, however, believe that they had a serious purpose and proclaimed that his intention in all his major paintings had been ‘to paint some great moral on the heart’. The Combat was a large painting, over 10 feet in height and 13 feet in breadth. No buyer would purchase it and Etty’s fellow painter John Martin acquired it for ₤300. Hung in Martin’s studio, it was seen by John, 4th Earl of Darnley, who then commissioned Etty to paint The Judgement of Paris (1826; Lady Lever Art Gallery). During the 1830s and 1840s Etty generally concentrated on smaller, less ambitious works. In this he catered to the market, to the point that, in his later years, he risked being accused of selling out to the dealers. Throughout his career Etty also painted portraits. In his later years, he also produced landscape paintings, which at their best, bear comparison with those of John Constable. In 1842 Etty campaigned for the establishment of a School of Design in York. Like many other Victorian painters, he often endeavoured to inculcate moral lessons by his pictures. He remained in London until 1848, but retired to York on account of failing health. In 1849 an exhibition of 130 of his works was held at the Society of Artists. Etty died at York on 13 November 1849. A statue of him was erected in front of the York Art Gallery in 1911. Though famous and financially successful in his day, he remains a neglected and underrated artist, one of the few 19th-century painters to paint Classical subjects successfully. Etty had only one English follower in the practice of painting the nude, in William Edward Frost. Etty considered his best works to be The Combat, his three Judith pictures, Beniah, David’s Chief Captain (all in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), Ulysses and the Sirens (Manchester Gallery), and his three paintings of Joan of Arc. Those pictures by Etty in the collection of the Tate include the aforementioned Pandora Crowned by the Seasons, the Youth on the Prow, Pleasure at the Helm and The Bather ‘at the doubtful breeze alarmed’. A collection of the artist’s works may also be seen in the gallery at York, including a good example of his portrait style, Mme Rachel (1858). His sensuous nudes may be seen in various collections – there are a couple of particularly good small ones in the Russell Cotes Museum at Bournemouth. The Storm (1830) depicting a couple clinging to each other in a lifeboat, is at Manchester. A cherubic Cupid and Psyche is in the V&A. The Metropolitan Museum, New York owns his The Three Graces, considered by some experts to be Etty’s masterpiece.