Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed'

Background

William Etty (1787–1849), the seventh child of a York baker and miller, began his career as an apprentice printer in Hull at the age of 11. On completing his seven-year apprenticeship he moved to London "with a few pieces of chalk crayons," with the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters, and studied under renowned artist Thomas Lawrence. Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, Etty submitted numerous paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received little attention when exhibited.

In 1821 the Royal Academy accepted and exhibited one of Etty's works, The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia (also known as The Triumph of Cleopatra), which depicted a large number of nude figures. Cleopatra was extremely well received, and many of Etty's fellow artists greatly admired him. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, ahead of John Constable. He became well respected for his ability to capture flesh tones accurately in painting, and for his fascination with contrasts in skin tones. Following the exhibition of Cleopatra, over the next decade, Etty tried to replicate its success by painting nudes in biblical, literary and mythological settings. Between 1820 and 1829 Etty exhibited 15 paintings, of which 14 included nude figures.

While some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, the country had no tradition of nude painting, and the display and distribution of such material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice. Etty was the first British artist to specialize in the nude, and many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent, although his portraits of male nudes were well received. From 1832 onwards, nagged 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.

Subject

Musidora is based on Summer, a poem by the Scottish poet and playwright James Thomson (best known today as the author of Rule, Britannia!). Summer was initially published in 1727 and was republished in an altered form in 1730 along with Thomson's Winter (1726), Spring (1728) and Autumn (1730) as The Seasons. Although the individual poems attracted little interest on their release, The Seasons proved critically and commercially successful once completed, and Thomson began to associate with important and influential London political and cultural figures. In June 1744 Thomson published a drastically revised version of The Seasons, which became hugely influential over the following century. Joseph Haydn wrote a major oratorio based on the poem, notable artists including Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner, and Richard Westall painted scenes from it, and over 400 editions of The Seasons in many languages were published between 1744 and 1870.

The painting depicts a scene from Summer in which the young Damon sits thinking by a stream on a hot summer's day. The beautiful Musidora strips naked to cool down by bathing in the creek, not knowing that Damon can see her. Damon is torn between his desire to watch her and the "delicate refinement" of knowing he should avert his gaze. Damon decides to respect her modesty and leaves a note on the riverbank reading "Bathe on, my fair, / Yet unbeheld save by the sacred eye / Of faithful love: I go to guard thy haunt; / To keep from thy recess each vagrant foot / And each licentious eye." Musidora sees the paper and panics, but on reading it and realizing that Damon has written it, feels admiration for his behavior as well as a surge of pride that her beauty can provoke such a reaction. She leaves him a note, in turn, reading "Dear youth! sole judge of what these verses mean, / By fortune too much favoured, but by love, / Alas! not favoured less, be still as now / Discreet: the time may come you need not fly."

As a nude scene from a major and well-respected work of English literature, the theme of Musidora was one of the few pretexts under which mainstream English painters felt able to paint nudes, and Musidora has been described as "the nation's surrogate Venus." Four versions of Musidora attributed to Etty exist in total, the first of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1843. The best-known version is that now in Tate Britain, painted in 1844 and probably first exhibited at the British Institution in 1846. The four paintings are identical in composition, although the landscape background varies slightly. One of the paintings is of poorer quality and may be a later copy by a student.

Composition

The painting shows the moment from Summer in which Musidora, having removed the last of her clothes, steps into "the lucid coolness of the flood" to "bathe her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream." Damon is not shown; instead, Etty illustrates the scene from Damon's viewpoint. By placing the audience in Damon's position, Etty aimed to induce the same reactions in the viewer as Damon's dilemma as described by Thomson; that of whether to enjoy the spectacle despite knowing it to be inappropriate, or to follow the accepted morality of the time and look away, in what art historian Sarah Burnage has described as "a titillating moral test for spectators to both enjoy and overcome".

The pose of Musidora is based on that of the Aphrodite of Cnidus and the Venus de' Medici. It is possible that Etty was also familiar with Thomas Gainsborough's Musidora, which shares similar elements. Gainsborough's Musidora, his only large nude, was never exhibited in his lifetime and remained in private hands until 1847, but Etty was familiar with its then-owner Robert Vernon and may have seen it in his collection.

The setting for the painting is a pool in the grounds of The Plantation, a house in the village of Acomb, near York. The Plantation was the home of his close friend and patron the Reverend Isaac Spencer, vicar of Acomb, and its grounds were a scene Etty had previously painted. In 1846 Etty bought a house in York for his retirement; Burnage speculates that Etty chose Acomb on the grounds that a view of York was quintessentially English.

Although Etty had traditionally worked in the Venetian style of painting, with vibrant colors and detail, for Musidora he adopted a much softer and earthier palette, although his use of reflected light on the flesh is derived from Venetian styles. He moved away from Rubens, who up to this time had been his greatest influence, and closer to the style of Titian. This is likely owing to the nature of the subject matter. Until then his history paintings had primarily been of themes of classical mythology and took place in brightly lit Mediterranean settings. The Seasons, by contrast, was seen as an explicitly English work, requiring a more muted palette to deal with the typical lighting conditions of Yorkshire.

Reception

Both exhibited versions met with great acclaim, and Musidora was Etty's most successful painting of a single nude figure. The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic called the 1843 version "One of the most delicate and beautiful female figures in the entire gallery," saying that "no hues can be more natural—more Titianesque, if we may so speak." The Literary Gazette called the version exhibited in 1846 "by far his finest work of art", comparing the piece favourably to Rembrandt and in particularly praising Etty's ability to capture shadows and reflections in water, where "in the management of these effects [reflections and shadows] Etty has no superior, and very few equals, in any school, from the earliest dawn of art". The Critic described it as "a preeminent work" and "the triumph of the British school."

Leonard Robinson argues that the popularity of Musidora reflects a change in art buyers. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, the primary market for art was no longer a privately educated landed aristocracy who had been taught the Classics and were familiar with ancient mythology, but the emerging middle-class. These new buyers lacked the classical education to understand the references in history paintings but could appreciate Musidora as a skillful execution and as a work of beauty in its right.

Legacy

By the time Etty exhibited Musidora, the theme was becoming something of a cliché, such that by 1850 it was described by The Literary Gazette as "a favorite subject for a dip of the brush." As interest in studies of Musidora waned, its role as a pretext for nude paintings by English artists was replaced by Lady Godiva, who had become a topic of increased interest owing to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Godiva. After the death of William Wordsworth in 1850, James Thomson ceased to be a significant influence on writers. From the 1870s his popularity with readers waned, and by the end of the 20th century his works other than Rule, Britannia! were little known.

When Etty died in 1849, despite having worked and exhibited until his death, he was still regarded by many as a pornographer. Charles Robert Leslie observed shortly after Etty's death that "[Etty] himself, thinking and meaning no evil, was not aware of the manner in which his works were regarded by grosser minds." Interest in him declined as new movements came to characterise painting in Britain, and by the end of the 19th century, the value of his paintings had fallen.

It is probable that the structure and style of John Everett Millais's controversial The Knight Errant were influenced by Musidora, but other than Millais, and Etty's admirer and imitator William Edward Frost, few other artists were directly influenced by Etty's work. In 1882 Vanity Fair commented on Musidora that "I know only too well how the rough and his female companion behave in front of pictures such as Etty's bather. I have seen the gangs of workmen strolling round, and I know that their artistic interest in studies of the nude is emphatically embarrassing." By the early 20th century Victorian styles of art and literature fell dramatically out of fashion in Britain, and by 1915 the word "Victorian" had become a derogatory term. Frederick Mentone's The Human Form in Art (1944) was one of the few 20th-century academic works to to view Musidora favourably.

Versions

The 1843 Musidora was bought directly from Etty by City of London merchant George Knott for 70 guineas (about £6,200 in today's terms) who sold it two years later for 225 guineas (about £20,000 today). It has passed through the hands of many private collectors since, remaining in private collections until at least 1948. As well as its 1843 exhibition at the Royal Academy, it was exhibited at an 1849 retrospective of Etty's work at the Society of Arts, and at the Royal Academy's 1889 Old Masters exhibition.

It is not clear which Musidora was exhibited at the British Institution in 1846. The Tate Britain version was bought from Etty for an unknown sum by Jacob Bell. It was exhibited in Etty's 1849 Society of Arts retrospective, but was described as "not previously exhibited". It was bequeathed to the National Gallery by Jacob Bell in 1859, and transferred to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in 1900. In 2001–2002 this painting was shown as part of Tate Britain's Exposed: The Victorian Nude exhibition, and exhibited in 2011–2012 in the context of a major retrospective of Etty's work at the York Art Gallery.

An almost identical version, which is possible that originally exhibited in 1846, was bequeathed in 1917 to the Manchester Art Gallery, where as of 2015 it remains. Another version, again almost identical to the Tate and Manchester paintings, is in a private collection; it is of poorer quality and is possibly a copy by a 19th-century student.