The Wrestlers (Etty)

The Wrestlers is an oil painting on millboard by English artist William Etty, painted around 1840. It depicts a wrestling match between a black man and a white man, under an intense light emphasising their curves and musculature. Etty was best known for his painting of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings.

About The Wrestlers (Etty) in brief

The Wrestlers is an oil painting on millboard by English artist William Etty, painted around 1840. It depicts a wrestling match between a black man and a white man, under an intense light emphasising their curves and musculature. Etty was best known for his painting of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings but had also painted men involved in various forms of combat. The Wrestlers was probably exhibited as part of a major retrospective of Etty’s work in 1849. It then went into a private collection and was not publicly exhibited again for almost a century. In 1947 it was put on sale; with little interest from commercial galleries owing to its subject, it was bought for the bargain price of 30guineas by the York Art Gallery, where it remains. The identity of the wrestlers is not known, but Sarah Victoria Turner speculates that the white figure may have been John Wilton, who may have possibly been the model for Little John in Daniel Maclise’s 1839 Robin Hood. The figures are set against a dark green curtain and a brown wall, rather than wrestling ring rather than a black and white wrestling ring. The figure in the middle of the ring appears to be dominant, but this was unusual for the time, as it was a common belief in Britain in this period that black people were physically weaker than whites.

Showing the subjects under bright light, the painting is a combination of intense juxtapositions between intimacy and violence, dark and light skin, and hard and soft surfaces. The intense light casts deep shadows, emphasising the curves and bodies, as the skin is stretched and distorted under the pressure of the grapple. The painting is not simply for dramatic effect, but reflects the fact that the wrestlers are glen with sweat after a long day of wrestling. It is also a reflection of this trend and a part of the English tradition of copying poses from classical Hellenistic works. The black wrestler is naked; the white wrestler wears a loincloth, although it is possible that this was added after Etty’s death. It was painted over a period of three evenings at the life class of the Royal Academy. The Royal Academy had moved to new premises in Trafalgar Square in 1837, a fact thought to account for the sweatiness of the central figures.

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Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished The Triumph of Cleopatra William Etty