82 
WILLIAM ETTY. 
York. The painter was the seventh child of a family of ten, 
of whom five died in infancy. The mother was a woman of 
superior intellect and decision of character, with some taste 
for design, which from lack of opportunity was not developed. 
She had also great business capacity, and her husband left in 
her hands the management of affairs. He seems to have been 
fairly well educated, but not brilliant, and with some sense of 
humour. In personal appearance, the painter resembled his 
father, being of a short, broad, and somewhat heavy build. 
The mother, according to Sir Thomas Lawrence, had the face 
of a Madonna. 
The painter’s first school was Mistress Mason’s, in Fease- 
gate, where he was sent at the age of three or four, then, from 
his eighth to his tenth year he was at the Bedern School under 
a Mr. Shepherd. He was a very quiet boy, shy and reserved, 
fond of drawing with anything he could get hold of, from a 
piece of coal to chalk, and on any available surface. At home 
he was gentle and affectionate, and devoted to his mother. 
There is no doubt that the surroundings of the boy had great 
influence on him, as we shall readily understand, if we try to 
realize what York must have looked like in his boyhood, before 
the days of jerry-builders and so-called improvements. The 
Minster, as yet untouched by fire or restoration, the old 
Gothic bridge with the beautiful Norman Chapel, the grey 
walls surrounding the city, the old churches, the beautiful 
lines of the old houses, the printseller’s shops (photography as 
yet unknown), and the natural beauties which he always so 
keenly enjoyed, the river, the trees on the New Walk, grid, not 
least, the gorgeous sunsets, all had their share in developing 
the artistic instincts of the boy. And, we know too, from his 
own words what an effect the windows of the Minster had 
upon him, he was never weary of gazing on their beauty, and 
speaks of them again and again in his letters down to the end 
of his life with an almost personal affection, and there can be 
little doubt of the influence they had in developing his sense of 
colour. Etty’s parents were Methodists from conviction, but 
though at first lie w-ent to chapel with them he soon began to 
go from choice to the parish Church, or to the Minster, 
attracted no doubt by the music and the beautiful building. 
