Clio

Clio, painted around 1805 and now at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, depicts the Muse of History — the eldest of the nine classical Muses, traditionally shown with a scroll representing the recording of human events — as a classically draped female figure. The Nine Muses, as personifications of the arts and sciences under the patronage of Apollo, were standard subjects for academic decoration and intellectual celebration in the Neoclassical tradition that dominated British art in the early nineteenth century. Etty's Clio represents his engagement with the Neoclassical current that, alongside the Romantic-Venetian tradition he was simultaneously developing, constituted the complex cultural environment of his formation. The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, while primarily a technical and business university, maintains an art collection that includes this Etty among its academic holdings. The Muse of History as a subject connects Etty's classical education to the broader tradition of celebrating human learning through allegorical female personifications.

Executed with rich Venetian coloring and attention to sensuous flesh painting, the work reveals William Etty's characteristic approach to composition and surface. The treatment of light and the careful modulation of color create visual richness within a unified pictorial scheme.