A RARE LIFE SIZE CARVED ARTIST'S LAY FIGURE OR MANNEQUIN ENGLISH MID/EARLY 19TH CENTURY Of hinged articulated formapproximately 182cm highProvenance:Formerly from the collection of The School of Design at York and almost certainly either from the personal collection of the York artist William Etty (1787-1849) or from his teaching collection in the school. The school had been established in 1842 chiefly through the efforts of William Etty and the head of the Central Council, and Etty's close friend, the Scottish artist William Dyce (1806-1864). It first occupied modest premises on Little Blake Street before moving to Minster Yard in 1848 where it remained for much of the second half of the 19th century until moving into the Exhibition Building in Exhibition Square in 1890. At some point Etty's easels and life studies and this life figure were stored in the loft. In the early 1970s these items were removed from the loft and came into possession of the principal of the York School Mr Dennis Donn. On his death in the 1990s the items passed on to the daughters of his student and later colleague and friend Reginald Williams. In 2018 the figure was sold to a Belgian Fine Art dealer and subsequently into a private collection in London.Although much respected as a painter of grand paintings based on literary, historical, and mythological themes, William Etty was both a highly respected yet controversial figure in British art of the first half of the 19th century due to his penchant for specializing in the realistic, non-idealized depiction of nudes.