What is the name of the artist who began to paint figures based on memory?
Of Etty's two original works exhibited at the RA in 1830, The Storm, inspired by Psalm 22, attracted little interest and was dismissed by The Gentleman's Magazine—typically a staunch supporter of Etty's work—as "a sad failure". The other painting exhibited was Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, which was to prove one of the most controversial works of Etty's career. Candaules is based on a story from Herodotus in which king Candaules arranges for his servant Gyges to spy on his wife Nyssia undressing without her knowledge. Gyges is discovered and at Nyssia's behest kills Candaules, marries Nyssia and rules the kingdom in his stead. The painting shows the moment at which Nyssia removes the last of her clothes. By positioning the figures in such a way that none are looking out of the picture, and the viewer is directly behind Nyssia, Etty aimed for the viewer to feel the same sense of voyeurism and intrusion that Gyges would have felt, forced to spy on his master's naked wife against his will and without her knowledge.
The works Etty painted following his return began to show a departure in style from his previous efforts. While the figures in his previous original paintings had been painted from sketches of models made in the studio or life classes, from now on he began to work from memory, and as a consequence his figures began to appear more idealised; Farr (1958) describes his figures from now on as "[conforming] less to a particular aspect of the model than to a preconceived notion of what the model ought to look like".
Etty