Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball
Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, also known as The Misses Williams-Wynn,[1] is a 173 by 150 cm (68 by 59 in) oil on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1835 and currently in the York Art Gallery.
Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball demonstrated that Etty was both capable of high-quality work and deserving of patronage by the English elite, and the success led to further commissions.
[4] Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he submitted paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received scant attention when exhibited.
)[13] From 1832 onwards, needled by repeated attacks from the press, Etty remained a prominent painter of nudes but made conscious efforts to try to reflect moral lessons in his work.
[23] After Jonathan Martin's arson attack on York Minster in 1829 caused major damage, Etty was prominent in the effort to restore the building to its original state.
[28] Although their dress is generally described as Italian, Dennis Farr's 1958 biography of Etty speculates that elements of the costumes were possibly intended to be Russian, based on Charlotte's headdress.
[26] As art historian Leonard Robinson points out, despite the title the sisters are not in fact shown preparing for the ball, but are fully dressed.
[31] The sisters are depicted in three-quarter length portrait;[28] Charlotte, the eldest, stands and helps Mary, who is seated, to decorate her hair with a ribbon and a rose.
[26] Their arrangement is similar to the positioning of the central female figures of Etty's The Lute Player, painted around the same time, and Farr views Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball as a direct continuation of the theme of that work.
[28] (The Lute Player was exhibited at the British Institution in early 1835 alongside Turner's The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, and was somewhat overshadowed by it.
[26] Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball took Etty some time to complete in comparison to his usual work, and he apologized to the sisters for his "inability to render [repeated sittings for him] less tedious".
"Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball was one of eight works exhibited by Etty at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the others being The Bridge of Sighs, Phaedria and Cymochles on the Idle Lake, Study from a Young Lady: A York Beauty, Study of the Head of a Youth, Venus and her Satellites, The Warrior Arming and Wood Nymphs Sleeping: Satyr Bringing Flowers.
[26] Leigh Hunt's London Journal noted that they were "glad to see him turn his abilities into a channel acknowledgedly more profitable than others are apt to be, and we heartily wish him success in it"; the same reviewer did, however, savagely criticise Venus and her Satellites for its gratuitous nudity and a "total absence of soul".
[35] Portraiture was seen as a vulgar and generally worthless form of painting throughout much of the 19th century, and portrait painters continued to be disparaged as a greedy and unimaginative group who survived by feeding the vanity of the emerging middle class.
[22] Other than Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, critics generally disliked his portraits, preferring his history paintings in spite of reservations over his depictions of nudity.
