William Etty
Nationality: British
Born: 1787-03-10, Feasegate, York, England
Died: 1849-11-13

William Etty was born at York, in March of 1787. After some scanty instruction of the most elementary kind, the future painter, at the age of eleven and a half, left the paternal roof, and was bound apprentice in the printing-office of the hull Packet. Kindness of an elder brother and a wealthy uncle, William Etty, himself an artist, stood him in good stead. He commenced his training by copying without instruction from nature, models, prints. Here he made a copy from an ancient cast of cupid and psyche, which was shown to Ope and led to his being enrolled in 1807 as student of the Academy, whose schools were at that time conducted in Somerset house. His uncle generously paid the necessary fee of one hundred guineas, and in the summer of 1807 he was admitted to be a private pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was at the very acme of his fame. For some years after he quit Sir Thomas' studio, even as late as 1816, the influence of his preceptor was traceable in the mannerism of his works. Though he had by this time made great progress in his art, his career was still one of almost continual failure, hardly cheered by even a passing ray of success.

In 1811, after repeated rejections, he had the satisfaction of seeing his 'Telemachus Rescuing Anti Pope' on the walls of the Academy. It was badly hung, however, and attracted little notice. For the next five years he persevered with quiet and constant energy in overcoming the disadvantages of his early training with yearly growing success, and he was even beginning to establish something like a name when in 1816 he resolved to improve his knowledge of art by a journey to Italy. Though Etty was duly impressed by the grand chefs-d'oeuvre of Raphael and Michelangelo at Rome, he was not sorry to exchange that city for Venice, which he always regarded as the true home of art in Italy. His own style as a colonist held much more of the Venetian than of any other Italian school, and he admired his prototypes with a zeal and exclusiveness that sometimes bordered on extravagance. Early in 1824 he returned home to find that honors long unjustly withheld were awaiting him. In that year he was made an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1828 he was promoted to the full dignity of an Academician.

Etty's career was from this time one of slow but uninterrupted success. He was a constant attendant at the Academy Life School, where he used to work regularly along with the students, notwithstanding the remonstrance of some of his fellow-Academicians, who thought the practice undignified. The course of his studies was only interrupted by occasional visits to his native city, and to Scotland, where he was welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm, and feted with the most gratifying heartiness by his brother-artists at Edinburgh. In 1848 he retired to York until his death the following year, having realized a comfortable independence.

Source: "Etty, William," Encyclopedia Britannica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911: 864.