page_title: William Etty
section_title: Training (1806–1821)
hierarchical_section_title: William Etty / Training (1806–1821)
context_page_description: William Etty RA 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.
  Etty's Cleopatra's Arrival in Cilicia, painted in 1821, featured numerous nudes and was exhibited to great acclaim. Its success prompted several further depictions of historical scenes with 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 successful and critically acclaimed, and in 1828 was elected a Royal Academician, at the time the highest honour available to an artist.
context_section_description: Applicants to the Royal Academy Schools were expected to pass stringent ability tests, and on his arrival in London Etty set about practicing, drawing "from prints and from nature". Aware that all successful applicants were expected to produce high quality drawings of classical sculptures, he spent much time "in a plaster-cast shop, kept by Gianelli, in that lane near to Smithfield, immortalised by Dr. Johnson's visit to see 'The Ghost' there", which he described as "My first academy".
  Etty obtained a letter of introduction from Member of Parliament Richard Sharp to painter John Opie. He visited Opie with this letter, and showed him a drawing he had done from a cast of Cupid and Psyche. Impressed, Opie recommended Etty to Henry Fuseli, who accepted him into the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer. Having satisfactorily completed drawings from casts of Laocoön and "the Torso of Michelangelo", Etty was accepted as a full student on 15 January 1807.
  Shortly after Etty joined the RA, four major lectures on painting were delivered by John Opie in February and March 1807. In them, Opie said that painting "brings into view the heroes, sages, and beauties of the earliest periods, the inhabitants of the most distant regions, and fixes and perpetuates the forms of the present day; it presents to us the heroic deeds, the remarkable events, and the interesting examples of piety, patriotism and humanity of all ages; and according to the nature of the action depicted, fills us with innocent pleasure, excites our abhorrence of crimes, moves us to piety, or inspires us with elevated sentiments". Opie rejected Reynolds's tradition of idealising the subjects of paintings, observing that he did not believe "that the flesh of heroes is less like flesh than that of other men". Opie advised his students to pay great attention to Titian, whose use of colour he considered unsurpassed, advising students that "colouring is the sunshine of the art, that clothes poverty in smiles [...] and doubles the charms of beauty. Opie's opinions made a deep impression on the young Etty, and he would hold these views throughout his career.
caption: The Missionary Boy (1805–06) is thought to be Etty's oldest significant surviving painting.[20][F]
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