The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate

William Etty had spent years being scolded for his nudes, called indecent and tasteless by critics who thought he was wasting a real gift. This enormous canvas was his answer, an openly moral subject nobody could call frivolous. He worked on it through a grim stretch. In 1830 he was in Paris and saw the July Revolution first-hand, bodies in the streets, and in 1832, the year he finished, cholera swept London and killed thousands. Both seem to have fed the heaped, tumbling figures here, struck down mid-revel as an avenging angel and its demons break up the feast. When it was shown that year, critics who had lectured him about decency suddenly decided he had a moral nature after all. Some read the whole thing as Etty repenting for the very paintings that had made him famous.