Self Portrait

Self Portrait, painted in 1844 and now in York Art Gallery, shows Etty at fifty-seven years old — three years after his election as an honorary fellow of the Royal Scottish Academy and five years before his death — in a mode of introspective late-career self-examination. Etty's self-portraits, of which York holds several examples, mark the stages of a career conducted in deliberate and sometimes painful tension with the Victorian cultural milieu that celebrated his technical gifts while deploring his subject matter. The 1844 portrait captures a moment of relative stability: he had survived the controversy of his earlier mythological subjects and achieved the recognition of full Royal Academy membership. His contemporary J.M.W. Turner was in the same decade producing his most radical late works; Etty's late career was less experimental but maintained the coloristic warmth that defined his artistic identity from beginning to end.

The self-portrait captures the artist's features with honest self-observation. The warm palette and confident handling demonstrate Etty's continued mastery in his later years.