William Etty

William Etty was born in York, March 10, 1787 and died in York, November 13, 1849.

Drawing his subjects from classical mythology and history, Etty concentrated on depictions of the nude figure--the only nineteenth-century British painter to achieve success in this genre. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools from 1806, and later under Thomas Lawrence and the French painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault. Having established his reputation in the 1820s through large exhibition pieces (many of them based on extensive study of the nude model), Etty was elected a Royal Academician in 1825. He made his fortune in the following decades, supplying merchants and industrialists with smaller-scale paintings.