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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 14:50, 27 June 2015 [1].

Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball

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Nominator(s):  – iridescent 00:38, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is a fairly little-known painting—it was in private hands between 1835 and 2009, so has had little attention paid to it—with an interesting back-story. Owing to their joint participation in the campaign to restore York Minster to its previous condition after much of it was burned in an arson attack, a prominent Conservative politician decided that William Etty, at the time generally considered England's most notorious pornographer, was just the chap to paint his daughters' portrait. Rather than a straightforward portrait, Etty set out to make "a fine work of Art" which ended up taking two years to paint, and the end result is something of a perfect snapshot of the aristocratic bubble which was about to be rudely burst by the Industrial Revolution. – iridescent 00:38, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Support - reading through, very good, but some small things

  • the seventh son of a York baker and miller: is this necessary outside of the bio.
    I'm neutral on whether that stays. That biographical section at the top of each of these Etty articles is there primarily because William Etty itself is such an appalling article one can't direct readers there to find out his background. I think "son of a miller and baker" probably ought to stay, as a means of pointing out that Etty was a provincial oik gatecrashing the London elite. (This is more relevant to his history paintings—he was prone throughout his career to following bizarre suggestions from posh people on the grounds that they had the classical education and he didn't—but I think it relevant here as well.) At some point I intend to give the bio the WP:TNT treatment and write a proper one—the current page is mostly plagiarised from an 1889(!) work—at which point this level of background detail on the articles on individual works won't be necessary. – iridescent 01:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Fine with that son of a miller and baker gives context. It was more the 7th son thing that made me wonder. Ceoil (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    The significance of that depends on knowing the cultural norms of provincial England at the time; the eldest son would have been expected to take over the family business, the second son would be an army officer or a clergyman, and the rest would be sent out into the world to sink or swim on their own merits. It makes no real difference whether it's included. – iridescent 08:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    While Etty painted a number of private portraits of 19th century, and portrait painters continued to be disparaged as a greedy and unimaginative group who survived by feeding the vanity of the emerging middle class - is the first 'and' misplaced.
    I'm not seeing that—is your browser clipping out a line somehow? That should read "While Etty painted a number of private portraits of his friends and acquaintances, he produced very few publicly exhibited portraits, exhibiting less than 30 throughout his entire career. Portraiture continued to be seen as a vulgar and generally worthless form of painting throughout much of the 19th century, and portrait painters continued to be disparaged as a greedy and unimaginative group who survived by feeding the vanity of the emerging middle class."—you seem to have lost the middle 20 words or so. – iridescent 01:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems I was reading in preview after inadvertantly deleting a swad of text. I'd better get my coat. Ceoil (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More later. Ceoil (talk) 01:08, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Images and sources: Images all free and correctly annotated. On-line sources (Manchester Art Gallery, Clark, Art Fund) all back up claims, with close pharaphrasing not an issue here. Ceoil (talk) 02:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • supporting after an exhaustive read through, on the basis of comprehensiveness, use of sources, images, and prose. Last thing bothering me is the time taken to execute; the nom mentions two years, the article "a good deal of effort", which seems a bit WWI, even utilitarian. Ceoil (talk) 03:59, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    The "a good deal of effort" and "took some time to complete" are intentionally vague. He started it in 1833 and completed it in 1835, and spent more time on it than he usually did (see that quote from him apologising for the number of sittings). However, as per the section on its exhibition this was one of eight paintings he exhibited in 1835—I didn't want to give the impression he spent two years solid working on this one piece. – iridescent 08:35, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. I've been consistently happy with the visual arts articles, and this one is no exception, I think it will make an excellent TFA. Wikipedia is a visual medium, and the storyline is broadly accessible. - Dank (push to talk) 11:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and thanks for the copyediting. This one was taken to FAC much sooner than I usually would for a new article, in an effort to have it ready for the York Art Gallery's reopening on 1 August (four of the seven pictures included, including the title painting, are in YAG), so I'm aware the rough edges may not all have been smoothed. – iridescent 15:03, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but a few very small nitpicks:

Lead - "the older Charlotte is shown standing, helping the seated Mary decorate her hair with a ribbon and rose." >> I think Charlotte should be offset with commas so as not to give the impression she's the older of more than one Charlotte.
✓ Done. There actually were quite a few Charlottes and Marys, which makes this family a pain to research, but the Charlotte depicted is the older of the two siblings. – iridescent 20:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Background - hyphen consistency - well received / well-respected. I keep having to check Fowler to see which is correct but am too lazy at the moment, so leave it to you. It might be right as written for all I know.
Removed for consistency. I actually prefer the hyphens and Fowler be damned, but I know some AWB drone will remove them anyway. – iridescent 20:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Following the success of Cleopatra, over the next decade Etty tried to replicate its success by painting nude figures in biblical, literary and mythological settings. >> "success" repeated
✓ Done – iridescent 20:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are three long parentheticals, and after reading a few times, I think it's probably okay to move them into the text without the parenthesis, but that's a style preference and not a big deal. Or maybe put all or part of that info into notes?
In my sandbox draft I had them in the notes, but felt they didn't really work down there and moved them up. "Etty's male nude portraits were primarily of mythological heroes and classical combat, genres in which the depiction of male nudity was considered acceptable in England" and the aside about The Lute Player being unfavourably compared to Turner probably need to stay in parentheses; they're very much asides, but important enough not to relegate them to the footnotes. – iridescent 20:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's all from me. Nice interesting read. Victoria (tk) 19:44, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! – iridescent 20:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome and thanks for the fixes. A couple more comments. It's difficult for me to support a VA article with a thumbnail size lead image and so I've left a note requesting those edits to be self-reverted. In the meantime, if the issue is that the lead caption doesn't contain enough information, it might be worth finding a compromise by adding the name of the gallery in the caption (for people like me who only read captions). RE the image sizes, I played with them in preview mode, and they looked pretty good with the upright parameter removed - again as a compromise. I was going to mention The Lute Player in my review, but thought the formatting there is probably a challenge because it might butt into the blockquote. Anyway, just throwing these out as possible ideas/solutions/compromises, if necessary. That said, I'm a big advocate of allowing personal preferences, but since I butted in on a conversation on your page (without at the time realizing the wrestlers was already in the works), and now we are where we are, just mentioning fwiw. Victoria (tk) 14:37, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and support by Gerda

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Interesting article with a title which got me hooked, lovely to read! A few comments, possibly more with more time:

  • You guessed it, I miss at-a-glance information like I find for other paintings such as this.
  • You mean, the at a glance information of artist, year, dimensions, medium and current location, all of which is in the first sentence? This series intentionally doesn't have infoboxes; Etty's works tend to have a lot of intricate detail and many readers aren't aware that they can click images to enlarge them, so it's desirable to have the lead image as large as possible – iridescent 18:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC).[reply]
  • Are you aware that you can have the lead image that size, if you specify image_size = 400px? --GA
  • Yes, and I'm also aware that a fixed image width would be a breach of Wikipedia policy (not an MOS-style "guideline" but a Wikipedia-wide policy) and cause an instant fail at FAC if anyone spotted it. (It's possible to force an infobox to large sizes by fiddling about with the Module:InfoboxImage syntax, but that runs the risk of the box becoming browser-crashingly large if the Wikipedia defaults ever change as it generates the width by scaling from the current default.) If you want to make forced-sizes permitted, the place to go is Wikipedia talk:Image use policy; if you want to make infoboxes compulsory, or even recommended, the place to go is Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Visual arts. – iridescent 22:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • General: I like short section headers, but "Elizabeth Potts" gives me too little of what to expect.
  • The section called "Elizabeth Potts" is about the painting called Elizabeth Potts—what would you suggest would be a more appropriate alternative? The only reasonable alternative I can see would be to strip out the subhead and have the background section as a single block of text, but I don't see how that would be an improvement. There needs to be something on Elizabeth Potts (and on the York Minster campaign) to illustrate the route by which he came to be commissioned to paint the Williams-Wynns' portrait; most people who know Etty's name nowadays know him as a pioneer of pornography, and he's an extremely odd person for a Conservative cabinet minister to choose to paint his daughters' picture. The modern-day equivalent would be a high-ranking US Republican commissioning Larry Flynt to direct his daughter's wedding video. – iridescent 18:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • All this is interesting but doesn't show in a women's name, even if the italics give away that it is title, in the context probably of a painting. Could subheaders point at the difference in appreciation of portrait vs. historic? - I don't know if reading first about the different value of portrait and history painting would have helped me to understand the reactions of admirers and critics better. - The woman's name also doesn't cover the last paragraph. --GA
  • I can't see an obvious alternative title. Any variant on what you're asking for would be something unworkably long. I honestly can't see the issue with the section header for a section about a painting being the name of the painting. – iridescent 22:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • When we come to the painting in question, I would like a repeat of where in his career we are, time-wise.
  • How can it be clearer than "In late 1833 Etty was commissioned by Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his seven children"? (That isn't sarcasm; I genuinely don't see how that can be made more specific without including the exact dates.) – iridescent 18:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This one-time reader in a bit of a rush has not remembered when he was born, and was careless reading the afore-mentioned paragraph, which after the 1834 exhibition takes us to 1829, then 1933. "In late 1833 Etty was commissioned by Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his seven children." - may I confess that I didn't realize that this means the painting the article is about. Going in my corner ... --GA
  • I've moved the last sentence of the Background section to become the first sentence of the Composition section, which ought to make the link between the date and the painting unmistakable. – iridescent 22:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like most painting images a bit larger (upright*factor), especially The Lute Player, to make comparison possible without a click.
  • I see no reason; the only time it's generally appropriate to override default image sizes outside of lead images is for unusually proportioned images or images containing a lot of detail, neither of which is the case here. The Wikipedia defaults are the defaults for a reason. Remember, a lot of people are reading these articles on phones. – iridescent 18:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

All for now, off to rehearsal, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:34, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've removed one "Cleopatra", since it's obvious from the context what's being discussed. "Foo was extremely well received" is absolutely standard English for "the critics liked Foo on its initial release/exhibition/performance/publication". – iridescent 22:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, and on no account should the size of the lead image be reduced. There does appear to be a problem with the first entry in the Bibliography though, Burnage (2011a); I can't see where it's being used in the article? Eric Corbett 16:44, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    You're right; that's there as a citation for the fact Lawrence had been Etty's teacher, which somehow got lost when I was shuffling references around trying to minimise the number of mid-sentence citations. Now restored. – iridescent 17:02, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and support from RexxS

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I'm glad I spotted this via a ping. First of all, it's a good read - quality prose that kept me engaged, and educated me as well as entertained me. It's also visually a very appealing page, and it's clear that considerable thought has gone into the choice of images to accompany the lead image. I'd like to emphasise the point that the captioning is remarkably well done. Quite often images are dropped into articles purely as eye-candy, but images really should be taking on part of the burden of carrying the narrative: at best they will substitute for the famous "thousand words". In this article, each caption (after the lead) complements the surrounding text, as it should do in an example of Wikipedia's best work.

On accessibility, there is no text too small, nor injudicious use of colour to spoil the article for a visually-impaired visitor. For anyone using a screen-reader, the alt text supplied with each image runs well into the caption, making that a more or less seamless experience for the blind. I admit I'm not a big fan of "Standing man looking at a painting", but I can't come up with anything better, so it would be churlish to be critical on such a minor point. Overall, I'd happily support this article as one of Wikipedia's finest. Well done! --RexxS (talk) 22:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RexxS, many thanks. I've replaced Mole's drawing with Mlle Rachel, so "standing man looking at a painting" is no longer an issue. Mlle Rachel is much more striking visually than Mole's portrait of Etty, and serves to illustrate Etty's changing portrait style. – iridescent 21:15, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Gosh - that's quite a dramatic change of style. I would never insist, but I think I might want to mention the fact that it changed so much over the years. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:34, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Most of his later paintings weren't such a radical departure from his earlier style, although he got much more accomplished with the backgrounds; Musidora is probably a more typical reflection of his late style. Mlle Rachel was probably a rush job completed in a single sitting in which he concentrated on capturing her face and intended to fill in the clothes later, but never got around to it. I'll try to do at least a short article on it, since I suspect that even though it's not very well-known this is one of his works that will attract the most attention. When I get around to doing the bio, it will cover in detail how his portrait style changed over time. – iridescent 22:48, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support - there's a tiny bit of copy-editing that could be done, but the article is really excellent work overall. Educative, clear and concise. Nicely done. Kafka Liz (talk) 00:19, 20 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks! – iridescent 21:15, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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