Bathers Surprised by a Swan after William Etty, Engraving by Portbury, c. 1860

A circular steel engraving after William Etty's Bathers Surprised by a Swan, the painting now in the Tate.

Two young women standing at the edge of a pool recoil as a swan rises toward them with its neck arched and wings half open. One throws up an arm, the other shrinks against her companion, and a third bather waits in the water behind them among reeds and overhanging trees. Water lilies float in the foreground. The image is framed as a roundel, which suits Etty's soft modeling of the figures.

The plate is lettered "W. Etty, R.A. Painter" and "E.J. Portbury, Engraver", with the title "Bathers Surprised by a Swan" and the imprint "London, James S. Virtue". Etty's painting came to the nation with Robert Vernon's gift of British pictures in 1847, and the Vernon pictures were engraved for the Art Journal from 1849. The James S. Virtue imprint marks a later impression of that series, here dated circa 1860.

William Etty was the outstanding English painter of the nude in the first half of the nineteenth century, and this subject shows both his debt to Venetian painting and his gift for warm, rounded form, translated by Portbury into delicate stipple and line.

An elegant piece for a bedroom, a dressing room or a collection of Victorian reproductive engraving, it looks best in a simple gilt frame. The engraved image measures about 21.6 by 21.7 cm (height by width) as a roundel, and the margins around it carry all the original lettering, which is worth keeping visible in the mat.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.