William Etty (British, 1787–1849) Woodland Nymph

Provenance: Sotheby's, London, sale of November 22, 2007, lot 83 (sold as A Young Woman Reclining on a Fur Rug).

Acquired directly from the above sale.

The Forbes Collection.

NOTE:

A Royal Academician and pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence – whose works he copied as a student painter – William Etty was both a highly respected yet controversial figure in British art of the first half of the 19th century due to his penchant for specializing in the realistic, non-idealized depiction of nudes, mostly female, as in the present eight lots offered here. Said the British newspaper The Times in 1822 – one year after Etty finally began to realize critical success with his historical Shakespearian-themed The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cicilia at the Royal Academy – “We take this opportunity of advising Mr. Etty, who got some reputation for painting ‘Cleopatra’s Gallery,’ not to be seduced into a style which can gratify only the most vicious taste. Naked figures, when painted with the purity of Raphael, may be endured: but nakedness without purity is offensive and indecent.”

Not swayed by critics, Etty would go on to execute grand paintings based on literary, historical, and mythological themes, including Pandora Crowned by the Seasons, The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, and The Sirens and Ulysses. Interestingly, despite the fame he achieved, Etty was to remain a constant fixture at life classes at The Royal Academy drawing schools. Prolific, highly successful, and eventually well-regarded, Etty’s reputation waned with the subsequent rise in popularity of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, which Etty is nonetheless considered to have influenced. An important exhibition of Etty’s work in 2011-2012 at the York Art Gallery, along with the inclusion of five of his paintings in Tate Britain’s “Exposed: The Victorian Nude’” exhibition in 2001-2002 did help restore Etty’s reputation and standing in 19th century British painting.

The eight Etty oil paintings included in the present auction, each from the Forbes Collection, reveal the skill and polish with which Etty renders “the female form, in its fulness [sic], beauty of colour, exquisite rotundity, may, by being portrayed in its nudity, awake like nature in some degree an approach to passion.”

The present painting was part of The Forbes Collection at Old Battersea House, London from the 1970s to 2010.