Allegorical Study (a sketch after Anthony van Dyck)

Allegorical Study (a sketch after Anthony van Dyck), painted around 1805 and now in Leeds Art Gallery, is a study after the Flemish master who transformed British portraiture during his years at the court of Charles I (1632-41) and whose influence on British painting extended through Gainsborough and Reynolds. Van Dyck's allegorical works — less celebrated than his portraits but equally important — provided Etty with models for combining figure painting with symbolic content in the elegantly formal manner of aristocratic patronage. Leeds Art Gallery, housed in the city's municipal gallery complex, reflects the cultural investment of West Yorkshire's industrial cities during the Victorian era; the city's woolen textile industry generated wealth that supported both civic institutions and private collecting. The presence of this early Etty Old Master copy in Leeds connects the painter to the Yorkshire cultural network within which he had his roots and to which he would return at the end of his life.

The allegorical composition is translated through Etty's characteristic warmth, giving Van Dyck's cooler, more aristocratic style a more robust, physical quality. The sketch format preserves the spontaneity of Etty's initial response to the source painting. Broad strokes establish the main compositional rhythms and color harmonies without the refinement of a finished copy.