The Englishman William Etty became famous in his homeland for provocative nudes, which in their time were considered immoral and indecent. Repeatedly, his pictures caused a scandal and provoked strong negative reactions of the bourgeois public. His paintings depict scenes from classical mythology whose protagonists were naked, as in "The Judgment of Paris" or "Diana standing by a waterfall".
Etty was born the son of a London baker and began at the age of eleven training as a draftsman, which he received partly from his uncle, who was also a painter. When Etty showed his picture "Cupid and Psyche" to the painter John Opie, he proposed him for the Royal Academy of Arts, where he first worked as a student and later as a teacher. Often Etty had to be accused of painting too offensive pictures and thus not behaving adequately to the practices of the Royal Academy. Etty argued that he was a worshiper of beauty, who never sought to seduce or do immoral things. The beauty of the woman requires her naked figure. The feminine innocence is all the more clearly visible. "To the pure in the heart, all things are pure."
Etty made trips to Italy, the Netherlands and France, where he collected impressions for his last great work "Joan of Arc". After the completion of his last work, Etty moved back to his hometown of York, where he died as a result of an asthma attack, after the Academy had given him a major retrospective.
© Meisterdrucke