This is William Etty

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

Etty’s Cleopatra’s Arrival in Cilicia, painted in 1821, featured numerous nudes and was exhibited to great acclaim. Its attainment prompted several further depictions of historical scenes bearing in mind 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 flourishing and systematically acclaimed, and in 1828 was elected a Royal Academician, at the era the highest honour clear to an artist. Although he was one of the most acclaimed artists in the country he continued to chemical analysis at sparkle 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 venerated field of portraiture, and future became the first English painter to paint significant nevertheless lifes. He continued to paint both male and female nudes, which caused rasping criticism and condemnation from some elements of the press.

An unquestionably shy man, Etty rarely socialised and never married. From 1824 until his death he lived like his niece Betsy (Elizabeth Etty). Even in London he retained a keen interest in his indigenous York, and was instrumental in the foundation of the town’s first art speculative and the move around to preserve York city walls. While he never formally converted from his Methodist faith, he was very attached to the Roman Catholic Church and was one of the few non-Catholics to attend the 1838 initiation of Augustus Pugin’s chapel for St Mary’s College, Oscott, at that get older England’s most important Roman Catholic building.

Etty was prolific and commercially well-off throughout the 1840s, but the feel of his feat 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 unexpected aftermath of his death his works became terribly collectable and sold for large sums. Changing tastes intended his conduct yourself later fell out of fashion, and imitators soon on your own his style. By the fade away of the 19th century the value of anything of his works had fallen under their indigenous prices, and outside his indigenous 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 behave at the York Art Gallery in 2011–12 led to renewed amalgamation in his work.