William Etty, R.A.

Private collection, Oxfordshire.

The use of a substantial wood panel, rather than the more typical millboard, as a support suggests that this painting was conceived and executed in Etty’s studio as an independent, saleable work, rather than originating as a life-room study produced at the Royal Academy. Nonetheless, it will have been informed by the many such studies Etty made there – the semi-reclining pose with legs folded being a relatively easy one for a female model to hold.

The composition of a nude woman thus posed, set against red drapery on the left with a landscape view opening on the right was often deployed by Etty. A comparable example (on canvas) is his Reclining Nude in a Landscape sold in Edinburgh by Lyon & Turnbull, 18 May 2016, lot 26. It also offered possibilities for the treatment of mythological subjects, such as the artist's Venus and Cupid (York Art Gallery). 

We are grateful to Richard Green for his assistance with the cataloguing of this lot and for endorsing the attribution from a photograph.