The Choice of Paris

The Choice of Paris, painted in 1846 and now in Scarborough Art Gallery, depicts the mythological beauty contest in which Paris was required to judge between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite — the judgment that led to the Trojan War. At seventy years old, Etty was in the last years of his productive career, and this late exhibition piece maintains the compositional ambition of his mature mythological subjects while showing the softening of forms characteristic of his final manner. The subject's three competing female nudes was of course ideal for Etty's specialty, and the Choice of Paris had been treated by Rubens in one of the most celebrated paintings in the Royal Collection. Etty's deliberate engagement with Rubens's subject was not coincidental; his entire career had been conducted in dialogue with the Flemish master whose flesh painting provided one of the primary models for his own approach. Scarborough Art Gallery, housed in a seaside setting near Etty's Yorkshire homeland, holds this late work as part of its collection of Victorian British art.

The three goddesses are arranged to display varied ideals of female beauty. Etty's warm flesh tones and sensuous modeling demonstrate his lifelong dedication to the academic nude.