Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball

Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball

 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/August 1, 2015 by — Chris Woodrich (talk) 09:26, 17 July 2015 (UTC)



Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball is an oil painting by English artist William Etty, currently in the York Art Gallery. Although Etty was then known almost exclusively for history paintings featuring nude figures, he was commissioned in 1833 by Welsh Conservative politician Charles Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his daughters. It shows Williams-Wynn's daughters, Charlotte and Mary, in lavish Italian-style costume: Charlotte, the eldest, is shown standing, helping the seated Mary decorate her hair with a ribbon and a rose. Etty put a good deal of effort into the piece and took much longer than usual to finish it, first exhibiting it at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Generally well received, even by critics usually hostile to Etty, it demonstrated that Etty was both capable of high-quality work and deserving of patronage by the English elite, and the success led to further commissions. It remained in the collection of Mary Williams-Wynn's descendants, and other than an 1849 retrospective exhibition was not shown publicly for 160 years. In 2009 it was acquired by the York Art Gallery, where it now forms part of a major collection of Etty's work.
 * Most recent similar article(s): Nothing since Portrait of a Young Girl on 14 March. (There have been a couple of coin articles and a building, which technically fall under "visual arts", but no sane reader would consider them similar topics.)
 * Main editors: Iridescent
 * Promoted: 27 June 2015
 * Reasons for nomination: To coincide with the August 1 reopening of York Art Gallery, in which this painting will be on prominent display (and to whose collection three of the other paintings illustrating this article also belong).
 * General note to the TFAR delegates; normally I'm a strong defender of defaults, which tend to exist for good reason, but given the level of detail in this painting this article is pretty much the poster child for making an exception and enlarging the TFA image, even if it means losing a chunk of the blurb to make space for it. Everything after "a ribbon and a rose" is potentially trimmable if need be. – iridescent  11:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Support as nominator. –  iridescent  22:45, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - Interesting article. August 1 posting seems appropriate.--BabbaQ (talk) 10:51, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - on the quality and guilty facinatingness of the article itself, and the planned reopening of the holding gallery on August 1. Ceoil (talk) 22:35, 2 July 2015 (UTC)