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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Dawn of Love (painting)/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) 12:13, 6 August 2016 [1].

The Dawn of Love (painting)

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Nominator(s):  ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Dawn of Love is a horrible painting, which when initially exhibited in 1828 was described as "an unpardonable sin against taste", and critical opinion has not become noticeably more forgiving in the intervening 188 years. It's arguably the second most significant artwork in Dorset (I'm nominating this as part of the push to improve coverage of the West Country), but that says more about the state of Dorset's museums than anything else. ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from FunkMonk

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  • FunkMonk, I've found a slightly high resolution version on ArtUK, with which I've overwritten the existing version on Commons (I can't see any value in keeping the low-res version), but I suspect that's going to be the best we'll find. After the National Portrait Gallery incident, a lot of British galleries—particularly smaller ones like Russell-Cotes which rely on the sale of reproductions and licensing rights for a significant chunk of their income—aren't going to put anything which can be used to create print-quality reproductions anywhere where Commons can get its hands on it. 800x660 is easily detailed enough that one can make out all the significant detail—this isn't one of those paintings where it's useful to be able to zoom in on individual elements to brushstroke level—so I'm not worried about the image quality. ‑ Iridescent 19:54, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
An improvement, even if bigger can't be found. FunkMonk (talk) 12:00, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he was unsuccessful in all the Academy's competitions." This makes it seem as if he was unsuccessful due to his influences? Or are the two parts unconnected? A bit unclear.
  • Sort of—the situation is too complicated to describe in full here without overwhelming this article (it's explained at William Etty#Training (1806–21); my assumption is that anyone who's curious enough to want to know more about the context will click through to the main bio). Basically, Etty was a follower of John Opie who was a great admirer of the Italian style of painting using bright colours and making human figures as realistic as possible, at a time when this style was very out of fashion in England, so although all his peers recognised and respected his technical ability he didn't get much recognition or commercial success in the 1810s. ‑ Iridescent 12:43, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My problem isn't that it isn't explained, rather that it is worded ambiguously... It is in a sense forcing the reader to "chase" links"[2] for them to understand what is meant... Couldn't something brief like "(the styles of which were considered unfashionable in England at the time") be added? That will also help the reader understand some of the criticisms in the reactions section. FunkMonk (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Reworded, which will hopefully make it clearer. I'm loath to go into too much detail in the background section; there needs to be some background for readers who've come across this article direct and need context, but I'm painfully aware that a reader with an interest in Etty reading through this series is going to be forced to read what is effectively the same potted biography 13 times. ‑ Iridescent 15:37, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "This painting was extremely well received" Extremely seems a bit hyperbolic?
  • Not really, in context—Etty's own description of the day it was unveiled was "the next day I awoke famous", and it turned Etty overnight from au unknown hack surviving on gifts from his brother, to someone who's work could be described with a straight face as "belonging to the highest class". (Price comparisons from the Victorian era to the modern day are notoriously tricky, but £210—the price Etty sold it for—was roughly 10 times the average annual wage at the time.)
  • "The Dawn of Love was extremely poorly" Likewise. Word seems a bit overused here.
  • Changed the one in the lead to "very" to avoid repetition. I don't think the hyperbole is unjustified here; although Cleopatra isn't his best work and Dawn of Love isn't his worst, in terms of public reception they were certainly the two extreme points of his career. ‑ Iridescent 12:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and the reaction of the lower classes to these paintings" What reactions? Or the potential reactions?
  • Implicitly, that rich people could appreciate these paintings as art but poor people were just viewing them for a cheap thrill. A brief summary of this attitude needs to be included in all this series as one can't understand Etty's attempts desexualise nudity and bring it into the mainstream without it; I try to make it as brief as possible so it doesn't get too repetitive for someone reading all the articles in this quite long series. IMO the attitude is best summed up in Vanity Fair's I know only too well how the rough and his female companion behave in front of picture's such as Etty's bather. I have seen the gangs of workmen strolling round, and I know that their artistic interest in studies of the nude is emphatically embarrassing., but that refers to a later work so I don't really want to quote it in this article. ‑ Iridescent 12:43, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can let this issue go, but just to answer: I don't think repetition across articles about different paintings is a problem if an article is to stand on its own. Many readers might be reading about specific paintings only, no? Doesn't have to be anything long-winded, the current sentence is just a bit ambiguous. The other reviewers here seem more familiar with the series, therefore it might be good to take unfamiliar readers into consideration. FunkMonk (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The trouble is, sources tend to take it for granted that readers will be aware that "the distribution of lewd material" is an offence under the English common law with the definition of "lewd material" dependent upon the status of the intended consumer, as it's so engrained in English culture; thus, they don't feel the need to spell out the concerns. An explanation of the English common-law definition of "obscene publication"—which (then and now) draws a sharp line between material kept at home for private viewing, and material available for public viewing, and in this period also had religious connotations in that nudity in history painting was seen as associated with Catholicism and thus inherently morally dubious—would fill a good-size book; it was only in 1960 that the "if it's sold to rich people it's art, if it's sold to common people it's pornography" presumption of the common-law was successfully challenged. Plus, the press of the time generally discussed such matters in euphemisms, so criticism tends to be couched in terms like "gratifying only the most vicious taste"; if you're familiar with the language of Regency England you'll understand that this translates as "a cheap thrill for the peasants", but it would probably violate WP:SYN to state it explicitly since it could theoretically be using "vicious" in the sense of "violent" rather than "uneducated". ‑ Iridescent 16:13, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from Sagaciousphil

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  • Support I've watched the series of these painting articles develop; this one is based on the same sound references that were reviewed/checked during the FACs for Etty's other works. I made a very minor tweak to a date format for consistency. SagaciousPhil - Chat 09:39, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil

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Read this last night, no edits I want to make. Support. re - "present a challenge", yes but perhaps not in the way he thought. Ceoil (talk) 12:55, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note

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Source review? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is the 10th FAC in the Etty series—I assume that if I were fabricating sources, someone would be gleefully pointing it out by now. Other than a couple of contemporary press reviews specific to this painting (which should be verifiable just by googling the quotations), there's no source in the bibliography for this which wasn't also used in William Etty itself—I don't know if source reviews can be inherited from the parent article in this way, or need to be done afresh each time. ‑ Iridescent 09:38, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm somewhat familiar withe these sources at this stage, and can attest to their quality. The formatting is all correct and consistent. Ceoil (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Along with image licensing checks, source reviews for formatting and reliability are standard procedure before promotion -- tks Ceoil for actioning. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:12, 6 August 2016 (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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