Lot Essay
William Etty was exceptional among British artists of his time in forging a highly lucrative career as a history painter. His extraordinary success stemmed from an ability to exploit the genre for the opportunities it afforded him of painting the nude, demonstrating his widely acknowledged talent in this area. Pluto carrying off Proserpine was one of Etty’s most ambitious history paintings and a work towards the creation of which he devoted a great deal of thought and preparation. In his ‘Autobiography’, published in the year of his death, Etty listed it (as The Rape of Proserpine) among his ‘principal works’, apart from the ‘nine large pictures’ – from The Combat to the Joan of Arc triptych – which he regarded as the core of his lifetime’s achievement. Alexander Gilchrist, Etty’s biographer, extolled the painting as ‘one of the noblest poems which ever glowed on canvas; a lyric burst of mute eloquence, imaginative in the deeper sense of the word; and musical in expression, as in conception vital.’ Pluto carrying off Proserpine is now rare as an example of Etty’s major history pieces remaining outside museum collections.
Pluto carrying off Proserpine is among Etty’s most old-masterly paintings. Farr suggests as a source of inspiration Charles le Brun’s design for the Rape of Proserpine sculpted for Versailles by François Girardon, a marble group engraved by Bernard Picart. However, Robinson proposes that Etty was remembering two large rape scenes painted by Valerio Castello that he could have seen in Genoa in 1816 on his journey home from Italy that year. Etty’s picture is particularly close in composition to one of these, The Rape of Proserpine (Palazzo Reale, Genoa), but reversed laterally. The sale of Etty’s studio contents at Christie’s in 1850 included many engravings after Italian and other old masters, so it is possible that he owned a print after the Valerio Castello, which might well have been in the reverse sense. If so, it is likely that this prompted Etty’s version of the subject rather than the memory of something seen around twenty years earlier, especially taking into account the considerably lighter key of his painting compared with Valerio Castello’s.
Etty finished his painting in April 1839, in time for that year’s Royal Academy exhibition (where the title in the catalogue was accompanied by lines from John Milton’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses). The picture had in fact been maturing in the artist’s mind since 1834 as he wrote to the dealer Richard Colls early in 1835 ‘There is a subject I hope to paint, before I am much older, - after my own heart, and I think of your sort … It Is one I have often thought on … Pluto carrying off Proserpine.’ Although Etty began making compositional sketches for the picture shortly after this and researching horse anatomy at the wharf of his friend Mr Wood in the City, it was not until January 1839 that he started to draw the outlines of the composition on to the canvas. The model for the figure of Pluto was Mendoo, an Indian, who often posed for Etty at this time, and the artist purchased flowers, grass and moss from Covent Garden to assist him in his work on the foreground. Even during the varnishing days at the Academy Etty continued to amend certain details that had been disparaged by ‘the Noodles’ as he contemptuously referred to his critics. The picture nevertheless attracted praise from some of the press, in particular for the beauty of the female figures: for example, ‘The Proserpine is admirable in form and colour, but the finest part of the picture is the water nymph in the foreground.’ (The Art-Union, 1839, p. 69.) It is interesting to note The Times reviewer’s comment regarding a ‘young Love, in flame-covered taffeta’ floating above the main action in the painting as originally exhibited. In 1839 the picture also featured a fourth horse to the right of the group of three now visible, as evidenced in a photograph from 1892 and the lot illustration from the Sotheby’s 1934 catalogue. However, by the time Dennis Farr’s book was published in 1958 these two features had been removed.
This monumental work was purchased after the exhibition by the renowned collector John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick and remained in his gallery at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham until 1846 when it was sold to Joseph Gillott who amassed a celebrated collection, including many works by Etty, in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Since then it has passed through the hands of several other renowned collectors of British art such as Baron Albert Grant, John Rhodes and his son Colonel Fairfax Rhodes, as well as residing for a number of years in Mexico.
We are grateful to Richard Green, curator of York Art Gallery (1977-2003), for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Pluto carrying off Proserpine is among Etty’s most old-masterly paintings. Farr suggests as a source of inspiration Charles le Brun’s design for the Rape of Proserpine sculpted for Versailles by François Girardon, a marble group engraved by Bernard Picart. However, Robinson proposes that Etty was remembering two large rape scenes painted by Valerio Castello that he could have seen in Genoa in 1816 on his journey home from Italy that year. Etty’s picture is particularly close in composition to one of these, The Rape of Proserpine (Palazzo Reale, Genoa), but reversed laterally. The sale of Etty’s studio contents at Christie’s in 1850 included many engravings after Italian and other old masters, so it is possible that he owned a print after the Valerio Castello, which might well have been in the reverse sense. If so, it is likely that this prompted Etty’s version of the subject rather than the memory of something seen around twenty years earlier, especially taking into account the considerably lighter key of his painting compared with Valerio Castello’s.
Etty finished his painting in April 1839, in time for that year’s Royal Academy exhibition (where the title in the catalogue was accompanied by lines from John Milton’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses). The picture had in fact been maturing in the artist’s mind since 1834 as he wrote to the dealer Richard Colls early in 1835 ‘There is a subject I hope to paint, before I am much older, - after my own heart, and I think of your sort … It Is one I have often thought on … Pluto carrying off Proserpine.’ Although Etty began making compositional sketches for the picture shortly after this and researching horse anatomy at the wharf of his friend Mr Wood in the City, it was not until January 1839 that he started to draw the outlines of the composition on to the canvas. The model for the figure of Pluto was Mendoo, an Indian, who often posed for Etty at this time, and the artist purchased flowers, grass and moss from Covent Garden to assist him in his work on the foreground. Even during the varnishing days at the Academy Etty continued to amend certain details that had been disparaged by ‘the Noodles’ as he contemptuously referred to his critics. The picture nevertheless attracted praise from some of the press, in particular for the beauty of the female figures: for example, ‘The Proserpine is admirable in form and colour, but the finest part of the picture is the water nymph in the foreground.’ (The Art-Union, 1839, p. 69.) It is interesting to note The Times reviewer’s comment regarding a ‘young Love, in flame-covered taffeta’ floating above the main action in the painting as originally exhibited. In 1839 the picture also featured a fourth horse to the right of the group of three now visible, as evidenced in a photograph from 1892 and the lot illustration from the Sotheby’s 1934 catalogue. However, by the time Dennis Farr’s book was published in 1958 these two features had been removed.
This monumental work was purchased after the exhibition by the renowned collector John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick and remained in his gallery at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham until 1846 when it was sold to Joseph Gillott who amassed a celebrated collection, including many works by Etty, in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Since then it has passed through the hands of several other renowned collectors of British art such as Baron Albert Grant, John Rhodes and his son Colonel Fairfax Rhodes, as well as residing for a number of years in Mexico.
We are grateful to Richard Green, curator of York Art Gallery (1977-2003), for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.