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| William Etty Académie 1849 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Royal College of Art, London |
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| William Etty Académie before 1849 oil on canvas Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire |
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| William Etty Académie before 1849 oil on panel Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| William Etty Académie before 1849 oil on panel Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| William Etty Académie before 1849 oil on panel William Morris Gallery, London |
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1811-21 oil on paper, mounted on canvas York City Art Gallery |
William Etty (1787-1849) – British painter, who, born to pious Methodists of York, was quoted as saying that 'as all human beauty was concentrated in woman, he would dedicate himself to paint her.' He had little education and a late start, working for a printer and becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools at the age of twenty. He studied hard, and continued to use the Schools' life room throughout his career, making painted studies (where pencil or crayon drawings were the norm) and developing a system of working up the figure rapidly from an outline to the emphatically pneumatic representation he sought. Wishing to shine as a History painter, he chose subjects from the Bible and the great poets that required prominent female nudes. Much encouraged by finding his Pandora Crowned by the Seasons bought by Lawrence, president of the R.A., he aimed high, spending 1822-24 in Italy, studying Venetian painting especially, and returning to tackle subjects already honoured by Titian and Veronese. He was, it appears, a clean-living man who never married but is said to have fallen in love with many a model, and respectful of women, but his picturing of them was openly voluptuous and met with disapproval from Victorians who welcomed similar subjects when painted by Italian Old Masters, not least, perhaps, because they would have darkened with time whereas Etty's work glowed with fresh colour. He had a reputation as a colourist in his day: in fact, he used colours firmly but without subtlety or originality. Similarly, there was nothing remarkable about his stagecraft as a painter, and his women tended to be the same version of Woman throughout, youthful and firm-bodied but of limited character. Everything else in his paintings he treated more broadly. Having worked in London, he returned to York in 1848, visiting London in 1849 when a large Etty retrospective exhibition was shown at the Society of Arts.
– The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton (Yale University Press, 2000)
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1814-15 oil on canvas York City Art Gallery |
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1824-25 oil on panel York City Art Gallery |
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1830-35 oil on canvas National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge |
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1830-35 oil on paper, mounted on canvas National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge |
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| William Etty Académie ca. 1835 oil on board National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge |
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| William Etty David 1810 oil on panel Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth |
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| William Etty The Bowman ca. 1825-30 oil on panel New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester |
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| William Etty The Bowman ca. 1825-30 oil on panel York City Art Gallery |
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| William Etty Two Standing Nudes before 1849 oil on canvas Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire |