Where was Etty elected a full Royal Academician in 1828?
Failing to sell at the Summer Exhibition, The Combat was bought from Etty by fellow artist John Martin for 300 guineas (about £24,000 in 2019 terms), following a promise Martin had made to Etty before the painting was complete. The painting was too large for Martin's house, and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the nearby National Gallery of Scotland where it remains. One of Etty's major works, it was exhibited at numerous major exhibitions including the seminal Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, before Etty fell out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century.
Throughout his life, The Combat continued to be considered one of Etty's most powerful paintings. In 1845, Etty took a smaller 89 by 118 cm (35 by 46 in) copy of The Combat, which had been painted by an unknown Edinburgh artist, and completely reworked it to serve as the basis for an engraving by George Thomas Doo. The engraving was published three years later, and the painting used as its model passed through the hands of several collectors in subsequent years, before entering the collection of the Ringling Museum in 1934. A number of sketches attributed to Etty, under the name of A Study for Mercy Interceding for the Vanquished, are also in circulation.After the success of The Combat, Etty continued with his preferred theme of history paintings containing nudity; of the 15 pictures he exhibited at the Royal Academy during the 1820s (including Cleopatra, Pandora and The Combat) all but one contained a nude figure. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, at that time the most prestigious honour available to an artist. The Combat was the first very large work attempted by Etty, and its success prompted him to produce further works on a similar scale over the rest of his career; he produced nine very large paintings illustrating moral themes throughout his career. As time went by his canvases came to be increasingly dominated by nude women.The 1832 exhibition of Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm, a painting containing apparently gratuitous nude figures, met a hostile reception from critics. From then on, while Etty continued to paint nude figures for the rest of his career, he made a conscious effort to try to illustrate moral lessons with his work. This effort was not wholly successful, and he continued to be regarded as a pornographer by some throughout his career. He died in late 1849, and following his death nude paintings went rapidly out of fashion in Britain.
Royal Academy