Der Triumph der Kleopatra

When William Etty showed this at the Royal Academy in 1821, he was an unknown of 34 who had failed to make a mark for years. He later said that the morning after the exhibition opened he woke up famous. The scene is Cleopatra sailing to meet Mark Antony on a gilded barge, crowded with figures and colour, and it was the colour that people talked about. One critic called it a splendid triumph of colour, and that reputation set the course of the rest of Etty's life. He would spend it painting the nude, admired for his handling of flesh and skin and, just as often, attacked for indecency. Ninety years on it was bought by the soap manufacturer William Lever, who hung it in the gallery he built at Port Sunlight, where it stayed.