The Early Life and Training of William Etty To understand the technical precision of William Etty, one must look past the controversy of his later subjects to his disciplined, mechanical beginnings. Born on March 10, 1787, in York, United Kingdom, he was the seventh child of Matthew and Esther Etty. His path toward fine art was not immediate or intuitive; instead, it was forged through the rigid structure of a trade. At age 11, on 8 October 1798, he was apprenticed as a printer in Hull. This seven-year apprenticeship provided a grounding in the practicalities of visual reproduction, a stark…