La giovinezza alla prua e il piacere al timone

Etty built his reputation on painting the nude at a time when British critics were quick to call it indecent, and this gilded, crowded picture, shown in 1832, drew him exactly that reaction. It illustrates two lines from Thomas Gray's poem The Bard, in which a golden ship full of carefree pleasure-seekers sails on, blind to the storm just ahead. A naked child blows on the sails to drive the boat, another reaches out from the prow to catch bubbles, and water-nymphs climb aboard while the figure of Pleasure lounges at the tiller. Many viewers could not work out what it was meant to say, and some simply found all the bare flesh offensive. The warning of the poem gathers in the dark sky at the right.