Seated Nude

23 November 1805

Moves to London to enter the Royal Academy Schools

He arrived in the capital with a few pieces of coloured chalk, intending to gain admission to the Royal Academy Schools, and stayed with his elder brother Walter in Lombard Street; Walter worked for the gold lace manufacturers Bodley, Etty and Bodley, in which their uncle William was a partner. Another account has Etty coming to London in 1806 at the invitation of this uncle.

1805–1807

The road to the Academy: Opie and Fuseli

To prepare for the entrance tests Etty drew from prints and from nature in Gianelli’s plaster-cast shop near Smithfield, which he called his first academy. The Member of Parliament Richard Sharp gave him a letter of introduction to the painter John Opie; impressed by a drawing from a cast of Cupid and Psyche, Opie recommended him to Henry Fuseli, who admitted him to the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer.

15 de enero de 1807 · Formación

Royal Academy of Arts

February – March 1807

John Opie’s lectures on painting

Soon after Etty joined the Academy, Opie delivered four major lectures in which he rejected the idealising tradition of Reynolds, not believing that the flesh of heroes is less like flesh than that of other men, and urged his students to study Titian’s colour. These views made a deep impression on the young Etty, and he held them throughout his career.

c. 1807 – 1808

A year as Thomas Lawrence’s private pupil

His uncle William paid the portrait painter Lawrence 100 guineas to take his nephew as a private pupil for a year; there was no formal teaching: Lawrence set aside an attic room where Etty copied his pictures and promised to answer questions. Etty found the copying so frustrating that he was ready to run away, but he persisted and learned to copy Lawrence very closely, a skill that later served him well when copying the Old Masters.

1809

Death of his uncle William, his patron

The death of the uncle with whom he had been staying forced Etty into an unsettled life, moving from lodging to lodging. The uncle left him a significant sum in his will, and his brother Walter took over the uncle’s place in the firm and was now able to support William’s work financially.