 The Bard was about the English destruction of Welsh culture and the subsequent decline of the House of Plantagenet and its replacement by the Welsh House of Tudor, and there was a general feeling among critics that Etty had misunderstood the point of the metaphors used by Gray. Etty claimed that his unusual interpretation of the text was intended to create "a general allegory of Human Life, its empty vain pleasures — if not founded on the laws of Him who is the Rock of Ages", and that the painting served as a moral warning about the pursuit of empty pleasure. This explanation appears to have left critics unconvinced. Even those critics most favourable towards Etty's technical accomplishments in creating the picture found it hard to ascertain what the painting was supposed to represent; other critics were more openly hostile, with The Morning Chronicle condemning it as "indulgence of what we once hoped a classical, but which are now convinced, is a lascivious mind". Purchased for a huge sum by Robert Vernon on its exhibition, Youth and Pleasure remained controversial long after Etty's death, with Farr's 1958 biography describing it as "singularly inept".
