Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Wrestlers (Etty)/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 Graham Beards via FACBot (talk) 15:09, 4 October 2015 [1].

The Wrestlers (Etty)[edit]

Nominator(s):  ‑ iridescent 11:01, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hot naked man on man action! The Wrestlers is a companion article to Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, as one of the other highlights of the York Art Gallery's collection of Ettys, but could hardly be more different. It's something of a problematic piece from an art-historical point of view; there's no doubt of its attribution, but because no documentation exists for the first hundred years or so of its existence there's a lot of "probably", "likely" and "possibly" here. Showing a white man wrestling a black man to the floor, the point Etty was trying to make is lost; he may have been trying to illustrate the point that (contrary to common English belief at the time) black and white athletes were of equal strength and capable of competing on equal terms in sport; he may have been trying to make an elaborate point that supposed primitive races could physically match the Greek sculptures which were then considered the ideal of manhood; or, there may be no anti-racist theme to it at all and these two just happened to be the models available that day. Owing to its scantily-documented history—it was lost until 1947—this one doesn't have the "legacy" section one usually finds on paintings.

(Brief note on capitalisation, which I'm aware will be jarring to readers in some countries; in BrEng "white" and "black" aren't generally capitalised when referring to race.[2]) ‑ iridescent 11:01, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed and captioned. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:26, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source check from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

  • Checking the references, everything looks good. I spot checked the ODNB refs, and they checked out. Hoping to get a review of the article in tonight between watching the new Muppets. A search at Google Scholar and JSTOR only turned up a masters thesis with any sort of reference to the work (that wasn't already used in teh article). LOoks good on sources. If @Johnbod: has any of the art sources, it might not hurt for him to spot check a couple of spots, but I'd not be that concerned if he can't. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • SupportComments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
  • Background:
    • In "and he was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, ahead of John Constable." what does "ahead of" mean here? Does it mean they got in the same year but Etty got more votes? Or that he made full status some period of time before Constable?
      • Reworded that to make it clearer; there was an election to fill one slot, and Etty won it. I mention it as a shorthand way of illustrating that even though modern readers may not be familiar with Etty, at the time his peers considered him at least as important as Constable. ‑ iridescent 07:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Uh... "and the reaction of the lower classes to these paintings caused concern throughout the 19th century." How did it cause concern?
      • The following sentence ("Although his portraits of male nudes were generally well received, many critics condemned his recurrent depictions of female nudity as indecent") is intended as the qualifier to that. In brief, a mix of a snobbish concern that people who didn't have the education to appreciate the context of his paintings saw them as pornography, and a good-faith concern that his overly sexual material was discouraging women from attending art exhibitions. I feel that in the background section to the articles on the individual works, it's necessary to explain the context in which he was working (someone who only tended to get public attention, and thus big-money sales, when he painted nude figures, but was at the same time struggling to shake off a reputation as a pornographer), but not to go into undue detail. Bear in mind that (presumably) most readers will have come to this either from or en route to William Etty itself, which explains all this. ‑ iridescent 07:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Subject:
    • "aspire to an ideal of physical strength which people were worried was becoming lost" which people? I'm pretty sure the whole populace of England wasn't concerned about this...
      • "The decline of manual labor means the population is getting out of shape" was undoubtedly the general attitude in Britain, and later in Europe, during the early Industrial Revolution (The male body and physique…was a topic of much anxiety for Regency and early Victorian audiences. In an age of increasing prosperity and industrialisation, it was believed that Britain's men…were becoming flabby in both mind and belly. There was a widespread fear that men would become effeminate, sedentary and weak as their business was increasingly conducted from the comfort of desks in stuffy offices rather than outside in the open air. if you want chapter and verse from the source). I don't see "aspire to an ideal of physical strength which people were worried was becoming lost" as any more of a problematic construction than saying "in the 1900s the people of France were concerned about war with Germany" even though there were no doubt Frenchmen who never gave the idea a moment's thought. ‑ iridescent 07:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Caption for Andromeda - I'm not seeing where the phrase "but had become notorious for using scenes from literature and mythology as a pretext to paint nude women." is cited in the text - needs a cite.
    • Added a citation in the caption. ‑ iridescent 07:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Excellent work - these are very minor quibbles, and I'll be happy to support when they are cleared up. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Lingzhi

  • "and the reaction of the lower classes" specifically what reaction?
  • Primarily, attracting riff-raff into art galleries to get a fix of smut—the Vanity Fair quote I use on Musidora ("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.") probably sums the attitude up best. Per my comment to Ealdgyth above, I think it's necessary to mention the general attitude to him to give an idea of the context in which he was working (a serious artist trying to shake off a reputation for pornography, but who was only commercially successful when he included nudes), but I try to keep the background section to a minimum given that most readers will likely have already read Etty's bio which already explains this in detail. ‑ iridescent 08:00, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • A single additional adjective would probably be sufficient.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:14, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sentence order: Some of the sentences seem to me at least to be in the wrong order within a paragraph, or even within the wrong paragraph. But changing sentence order is a heavier copy edit than merely changing "him" to " his work", and I am hesitant to disturb the current version too much while it is at FAC. I suppose I could edit in my sandbox with moved sentences highlighted, then my bowdlerizations could be reviewed by Iridescent, if that seems agreeable. (This might be spread out over a couple days, since I do not always have contiguous block of free time). Or I could just edit the article, but I would hate to start an edit war. :-)  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:06, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can you give some examples of what you feel is problematic? I'm not seeing it, but this was one of the first ones written in this series, and I may be over-familiar and thus not seeing the obvious. ‑ iridescent 18:19, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I couldn't give you the final word on precisely where (IMO) any given sentence should be located, because in these situations I often feel something is misplaced, but then there are 2 or 3 potentially better locations, and I would actually have to try each. But at a glance, the naked/loincloth sentence seems misplaced, as does the bit about skin colors/contrast. I might move "many of his peers" to the end of its current paragraph, unless he became respected after he was selected. Some sentences about visiting Europe etc. seem misplaced. And so on. I would probably move other sentences as well. It's mostly just a matter of putting like topics together. IMO.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 20:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll have another look through, but probably won't be until tomorrow. ‑ iridescent 21:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Iridescent: Have a look at my sandbox for proposed changes so far. It still needs buffing, but this gives an idea... I have highlighted newly added content. In particular, there is an organizing sentence at the very start of the "Subjects" section. I have moved some sentences into entirely different sections of the article. I also count 26 semicolons, which is decidedly too many (here I'll add "for my taste", though I think it is goes beyond that). Half of the semicolons are reference formatting, sorry. Still a bit much, but much less so.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:40, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The other changes look fine, but I'd be very reluctant to say Two characteristics of the subjects are worth noting: they are nearly-nude men wrestling, and the subjects are black- and white-skinned. so baldly. It's obvious to the reader that it's a painting of two nearly nude men wrestling and that one is black and one is white, so I don't see the need to patronise by pointing it out; plus, it's not for us to declare in Wikipedia's voice what the reader does and doesn't consider worth noting. On art history articles—particularly regarding someone like Etty who was known for experimental techniques and for pastiching the styles of other artists—many readers are going to be interested purely in the execution of the work, with no particular interest in the actual subject, and I don't consider it appropriate to be telling the reader what they should and shouldn't consider important. ‑ iridescent 10:25, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The exact wording (e.g., "noteworthy") of the sentence is meant as a scratch placeholder. However, I believe there's a need for an organizing sentence with roughly the same content. The point here is to let the reader initialize two mental spaces for the presence of two discussions in the section: "naked guys" and "black and white together".Also, the identity of the wrestlers shouldn't be in the Composition section, should it? [After thought: It doesn't really fit in that section, but looks even worse in others, so perhaps let it be...]  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:30, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The term "lower classes" might conceivably be offensive to some. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:49, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If someone finds the term "lower classes" offensive, they probably shouldn't be reading an article on Victorian England (or on England at any time, come to that, since it remains the main faultline of English society). There is no synonym, without using awkward (and even more jarring to the modern eye) constructions like "proletarians and peasants"; in the language of the time, "artisans", "the working class", "the poor" and "labourers" were four discrete groupings. (The term generally in use at the time for "all those who work with their hands" was "the men", but for obvious reasons that's not a term one really wants to be using shorn of context. The modern term in British English is C2DE, but the ABC1/C2DE distinction will be incomprehensible to readers outside the UK, as well as looking out of place in an article about the 1840s.) ‑ iridescent 23:14, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I defer to your judgment, of course. It doesn't offend me personally, but thin-skinnedness has become a popular career option, at least among Americans.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:04, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Iridescent: [See two retractions above.] Predictable versus surprising. You may think I'm going overboard, but that's what I have been pondering. Predictability aids the reader's comprehension, but a dash of surprise helps jar those neuron synapses into alertness. Forex, the whole bit about the subjects' identity does not logically belong in the Composition section, but it does add an unexpected chunk of interesting info there. After experimenting, I think overall the latter offers more benefit than the former, so I left it alone. Now I have taken the caption from the Benaiah image and used it as an organizing sentence for the Subject section. It doesn't mention black/white, but eases the transition from Composition to "naked guys". Not sure if it's better there or not. I defer again to your opinion. &nbsp Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I've held back until now merely to give Iridescent space to alter any gross mistakes in anything I have changed.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:52, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • "millboard" (x2): links to an article that doesn't mention millboards.
  • "emphasising the curves and musculature of the wrestlers' bodies": just something to consider: "curves" might mean different things to different readers (also in the second sentence in the lead).
  • Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 20:47, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Millboard is just a particular type of stiff paperboard—most people nowadays know it as the stuff hardback book covers are made of, while those of a certain age will remember it as the stuff protestors' placards were made of before the invention of cheap printing on plastic. Artists like it because it's light and easy to carry, it has no grain (so if it's nicked, the sheet doesn't rip), and is sturdy enough to hold thick paints without wrinkling. I considered not linking it at all, but I figured that at least this way, it makes it clear to readers that it's a type of paperboard. Regarding "curves", there's no obvious synonym I can think of—Etty's use of bright light (unusual for this period—no lightbulbs yet) was to make the curves appear exaggerated without actually exaggerating them. The only obvious alternative is "contour", which to me sounds like a reference to skin texture rather than body shape. ‑ iridescent 21:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • muscles == shape, tone, shape and tone, definition, lines?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd incline against "tone", since in the context of this article that sounds like a reference to skin colour rather that muscle tone, while "definition" isn't quite right—in the context of body shape, that means "parts are distinctly visible". The point here is that the lighting makes their torsos, legs and buttocks appear slightly over-inflated, but when you look more closely they're actually normally-proportioned. "Emphasise their musculature and body shape", perhaps—I'll have a think. ‑ iridescent 21:29, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support No issues with the standard of writing, sourcing or coverage, all of the usual quality. Major issues with the horrible painting. Nominator should be blocked. Ceoil (talk) 10:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks—Etty was capable of remarkably striking 50-years-ahead-of-his-time works, but his nude studies have dated very badly by modern standards. (This is by no means the tackiest; that would be The Dawn of Love.) ‑ iridescent 10:38, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I've watched this article since it was first created and have followed the various tweaks made. The sources have been validated previously so no problems but I do have a very minor query: the link to "About the artist" on the Manchester Art Gallery site (currently ref #8) is taking me to the Gallery home page and no matter how much I try to search I cannot get to the relevant page. Is it a temporary site problem or the probably much more likely scenario of my "operator error"? SagaciousPhil - Chat 09:15, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (having stumbled here from my FAC). Good writing style, quite accessible to the reader, meticulously cited, high quality article, most educational and encyclopedic. At the moment looks like some coding error -- no categories at the bottom of the page. Cirt (talk) 01:43, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Re categories: Oops that was me, when I subbed in the text from my sandbox. Sorry. Another editor repaired my error.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Looks much better now. I've had opportunity today to re-read through the article one more time, and I reiterate my Support. The article is quite high quality and most encyclopedic. Educational on multiple levels. Good luck, — Cirt (talk) 22:19, 30 September 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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