ETI E NNE. [STEPIIENS.] ET l'Y, WILLIAM, R.A., was born at York, March 10, 1787. His father rented a mill iu the vicinity, and kept a baker's shop in the city ; and the boy assisted in the shop till he was of age to be put to learn a trade. Ile had already shown a marked fouduesa for drawing, and his mother, as in after-life the great painter was fond of relating, had encouraged his propensity, while neighbours used to patrouise' the incipient artist with halfpence and pennies to buy chalk and pencils. In his twelfth year he was apprenticed to a printer at Hull, in which situation, over-worked, witeout friends and distant from his family, and denied the privdege of drawing, he appears to have at first led a very uncomfortable life. But after awhile his master was persuaded to let the boy "at lawful hours" indulge his artistic tastes, and, though still without instruction, Etty soon began to acquire sufficient facility in drawing to make his companions in the printing office desirous tq possess, and some of them careful to preserve, his sketches and rude attempts at painting. At length, his seven years' apprenticeship having expired, he gladly obeyed the invitation of sn uncle to come up to London. His uncle, himself a skilful draughts man, saw promise in the youth's crude efforts, and generously afforded him the means of practically solving the question whether his inclination for the life of a painter was an impulse merely, or the result of a native aptitude.
At first, without any formal instruction, he draw, ae he says in his Autobiographical Sketch,' "from prints, or from 'nature, or from any thing he could ; . . . his first academy being a plaster-cast shop, kept by Gianelli, near Smithfield." Having thus sufficiently mastered tho difficulties of drawing " from the round," he obtained an intro duction to Fuseli, then keeper of the Royal Academy, and was admitted by him to study there as a probationer. He entered as a student in January 1807, along with Collins, from whose companionship in study, with that of Hilton and Hayden, be derived considerable benefit. In the following July Etty became an in-door pupil for twelve months to Sir Thomas Lawreucs, then in the height of his reputation—Etty's uncle kindly paying the hundred guineas required as a premium. From the great portrait painter Etty received little direct instruction ; be however saw him paint, and though at first the extreme facility of the master's execution almost overwhelmed the pupil with despair, he gradually learnt this very important part of a painter's craft—" the great key to art," as he calls it; and he foiled, wheu he could copy Lawrence's pl.:tures, that those of other painters, including the great
painters of Italy, pres-nted comparatively few difficulties. Etty laboured with untiring diligence in the school of the Royal Academy, and in copying at the British Institution and elsewhere, whilst pre. paring his earliest original works for the Academy Exhibition ; but though his copies met with purchasers, and his original efforts with praise, it was long before he could find an opportunity to bring any of his works before the public. Year after year all the pictures he sent were returned from both the Royal Academy and the British Gallery. He applied in his despondency for advice to his old master. "Lawrence," he says, "told me the truth in no flattering terms; he said I had a very good eye for colour, but that I was lamentably deficient in all other respects almost." Etty took the reproof in good part, worked day and night, "and with such energy, to cure his radical defects, that at last a better state of things began to dawn." He had the delight to fiud one of his pictures, a Telemachus Rescuing Antiope; admitted to a place on the walls of the Royal Academy in 1811. But the place was a bad one, and the picture attracted no notice. However he went on, and at each succeeding exhibition of the Aca demy and the British Institution some of his paintings found a place. His subjects, with the exception of a few portraits, were mostly classical, though not of the kind by which he ultimately acquired fame and fortune ; and the impressiou among his companions in the schools —where he was still one of the most regular attendants—as well as among artists and patrons, was, that he was a good-tempered plodding fellow, but would never become a successful painter. His friends suggested a visit to Italy, and for Italy accordingly—intending a year's stay in the land of art—he set out in the autumn of 1816. But he soon became home-sick—moreover one of his oft-recurring love-fits for "one of my prevailing weaknesses was a propensity to fall in love"—was strong upon him, and within three months he was back again and hard at work in London.