Nude Study

William Etty

Oil on panel

10 inches

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Commentary by Hilary Morgan

Single figure paintings on millboard of this type are usually the products of Etty's work in the Life Room of the Royal Academy Schools, where he painted for two hours every evening for nearly forty years. His sale in 1850 contained nearly eight hundred such products of his industry and enthusiasm: as Anderdon wrote: 'This was a wonderful sale to see - Christies 2 Rooms encumbered by Millboards and Sketches of canvas each displaying forms of man and womankind - heaps.' Many of these studies were later turned into pictures by the crude addition of backgrounds to make them more saleable. Gilchrist, Etty's first biographer, deplored the fact that so many had been painted over by inferior men and hopelessly ruined'. The present work retains its original indefinite background and the freshness of a direct study from the life.

William Holman Hunt left a vivid account of Etty, shortly before his retirement, at work in the Life Room where he continued to paint even though he was so ill that he could scarcely mount the stairs. although this account dates from a period some twenty years after the production of the present work, it is both revealing about Etty's technical methods and about the passion with which this shy and pious bachelor painted the nude.

'He painted on a sized but unprimed mill-board; he made the outline hastily with charcoal, dusted this out slightly, then took out his prepared palette and fastened it with a screw to the left hand upper end of his board. His colours were set in order from white through reds, browns, blues and greens to black. He began using them rubbing in the darks with umber and rich browns, and then painted on the general lights in masses with accentuated prominences of pure white, tempering this gradually from patches of blanched reds and lakes kept in squares of different strengths on his prepared palette. At this stage, he made the half tints by leaving the ground more or less to show through the scumblings. After each touch his weighty head overbalanced itself to right and left, while he drew himself back for a more distant glance. At every fresh sally he recommenced by enlarging the sweep of his brush on the palette. The next evening he began to clear away the excess of dried and undried paint with cuttle-fish, and encircled away again with colours differing only by the inclusion of yellows and the more delicate lakes.... He was intoxicated with the delight of painting, and when, after a careful reloading of his brush, he drove the tool upwards in frequent bouts before his half closed eyes, I don't think that, had he been asked suddenly, he could have told his name.'

Etty's enjoyment of painting communicates directly to his audience in these free studies. In March 1837, at the last meeting of the Life School at Somerset House, Etty presented a life study to Constable, who had become his friend after they were no longer rivals for academic honours. '"You might eat it," Constable is said to have remarked, smacking his lips.'

References

Farr, Dennis. Etty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.

Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Etty. volume 2. London: David Bogue, 1855.

Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. volume 1. London: Macmillan & Co.,1905.

Newall, Christopher. A Celebration of British and European Painting of the 19th and 20th Centuries. London: Peter Nahum, nd [1999?]. Pp. 6-7.

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Last modified 11 August 2006