Iphigenia (copy after Joshua Reynolds)

Iphigenia (copy after Joshua Reynolds), painted in 1830 and now in York Art Gallery, is a copy after Reynolds's painting depicting the Greek princess sacrificed by her father Agamemnon for favorable winds to Troy — one of the great subjects of Greek tragic poetry, treated by Euripides in his Iphigenia in Aulis. Reynolds's original (c. 1789) showed Iphigenia with upward gaze and dramatic expression, placing the classical subject within the Grand Manner tradition he had advocated throughout his presidency of the Royal Academy. Etty's 1830 copy — made two years after his own RA election — is simultaneously a tribute to his predecessor and a technical exercise in understanding how the first President of the Royal Academy handled the emotional demands of tragic subject matter. Reynolds represented the standard of British academic achievement against which Etty measured his own work; copying his Iphigenia was an act of professional self-positioning as well as artistic study.

The copy reveals Etty translating Reynolds's more restrained flesh painting into his own warmer, more Venetian idiom. The classical subject is rendered with the glowing skin tones that distinguish Etty's approach from Reynolds's cooler, more sculptural modeling. Drapery and background follow the original composition while bearing the marks of Etty's characteristically broader brushwork.