Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Triumph of Cleopatra/archive1

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 15:50, 20 September 2015 [1].

The Triumph of Cleopatra[edit]

Nominator(s):  ‑ iridescent 23:29, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

William Etty was one of the most influential artists in English history, was responsible for reunifying the British and European artistic traditions which had diverged during the decades-long wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and during his lifetime was considered one of the greatest artists of all time. Nowadays he tends only to be remembered as "the gratuitous nudity guy", and The Triumph of Cleopatra is why. Although tame by later standards, it both shocked and fascinated critics when it was first exhibited, and prompted Etty to spend the next 25 years repeating the "historical pretexts for people to mislay their clothes" formula. It's certainly not the most attractive or technically accomplished of artworks, but even 200 years later is surprisingly striking. (For the last century it's been on display at the Lady Lever Art Gallery; astonishingly, given what a cultural and economic powerhouse the place has been, if promoted this will be only the second Merseyside FA not about either Liverpool F.C. or the Beatles.) ‑ iridescent 23:29, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Brief comment Article looks very nice, though I most likely won't conduct a detailed review because I am in no way familiar with the arts. However, I have noticed that your ISBN numbers need to be hyphened. Burklemore1 (talk) 05:38, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Added hyphens since I have no strong opinions either way, but where has this "ISBN numbers need to be hyphened" idea that has recently started doing the rounds come from? This is not and never has been a requirement of anything—clicking through to Special:BookSources strips the hyphens back out again out in any case. ‑ iridescent 09:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure to be honest.... I have been noticing it a lot myself. I have been told to hyphen mine as well in the past, and I have seen a few editors here suggesting others to hyphen them. If it's not a requirement then my comment should be more of a suggestion. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a strong proponent of properly-hyphenated ISBNs, I'll weigh in here. Yes, Special:BookSources strips the hyphenation. No, that doesn't make the hyphenation irrelevant. Each grouping of numbers in an ISBN-13 conveys different information: prefix, registration group, registrant/publisher, title, check digit. It's more or less impossible to do this manually, because most of these components don't contain a fixed number of digits. In any case, it's very simple to pass ISBNs through conversion utilities to restore the proper hyphenation; it is not, strictly speaking, a FACR requirement, but there's very little reason not to implement the standard (and for some people, it can actually be useful). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed and captioned. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:48, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support and a few very minor comments:

  • Lead
    • I suppose Port Sunlight is near Liverpool as the crow flies, but to us Scousers the Wirral is a far-off country of which we know nothing. It would feel more comfortable as "the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Merseyside".
      • I don't have any particularly strong opinions either way. I went with the "near Liverpool" formulation as something more likely to be understood by non-British readers—thanks to the Beatles and football, many people have at least a vague knowledge of where Liverpool is, whereas Merseyside or Wirral are likely to be fairly meaningless to the typical American, Australian etc reader. (The LLAG obviously don't object to being described as "Liverpool", given the prominent "Liverpool" branding on their website.) ‑ iridescent 20:25, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they are part of "National Museums Liverpool", and are really pretty close as the Mondeo drives. Johnbod (talk) 02:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Background
    • "under renowned portrait painter Thomas Lawrence" – clunky false title which can be fixed by the insertion of "the" after "under".
    • "piano manufacturer Thomas Tomkinson" – as above. (Try The New York Times's "good morning" test: if you can't imagine saying "Good morning, piano manufacturer Tomkinson", the title is false.) The construction is passable in tabloid journalese but is better avoided in good formal writing.
      • We've had this conversation before—I personally think that adding "the" makes it look archaic to American readers while not improving comprehensibility for UK readers (nobody is going to be confused into thinking "Piano Manufacturer" was his formal title)
  • Legacy
    • "(about £23,000 in 2015 terms[16])" – the MoS would have us put the reference after the closing bracket.
      • In that case, the MOS should be changed. Moving the citation outside the bracket makes it unclear whether the citation is for the fact within the brackets or for the sentence as a whole. ‑ iridescent 19:20, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notes
    • Note F: I see what you're getting at, but it isn't factually correct to say sans phrase that knighthoods "were only bestowed on presidents of major institutions" – generals, MPs, courtiers and other Establishment figures got knighthoods in cartloads. Inserting "for artists" after "knighthoods" and perhaps then dropping the last eight words would do the trick.
      • Clarified. (The sentence in which this footnote appears already included "for artists", which hopefully made it clear anyway.) I do think this footnote needs to be included in some form to make it clear that Etty's lack of formal honours in England wasn't any kind of snub from the authorities. ‑ iridescent 19:20, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's all from me. This article seems to me to meet all the FA criteria, and I am happy to support its elevation. – Tim riley talk 13:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment The first image does not appear to have relevance to the section. The caption does, but the image itself is not a reference to the caption being used, it is purely decorative to use the image if it is not linked specifically to the caption. The image used is just an example of the artists flesh tone work. Also many of the images interfere with formatting causing the section titles to severely off on my monitor at 1920x1080. I suggest loosing the first image: Male Nude with Staff (1814–16). " and checking placement for formatting.--Mark Miller (talk) 21:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Up to the usual high standards. No quibbles except another forlorn protest against false titles, which aren't compulsory even in American, and are not part of correct British English. Also I don't like & don't trust taking RPI or CPI back that far - from the same sources 500gn was almost 10x "Average Annual Nominal Earnings" in 1880, which would give an equivalent value today over £200,000, rather than the £47K given. That would be a more realistic figure I think. Unless my mental arithmatic is wrong. Johnbod (talk) 02:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did think long and hard about whether CPI was an appropriate measure for this series. My thinking was that yes, it is—I see the key element as "did picture sales provide Etty with enough income to eat?", for which I consider CPI the most relevant of the indices. Once I've used CPI for Etty's own sales, it would look jarring to switch to RPI or average earnings for the later resales. The figures are all intentionally rounded to prevent them being too accurate. (I consider Average Nominal Earnings a meaningless measure when it comes to the early 19th century; Britain contained so many apprentices, indentured servants and sharecroppers who were to all practical purposes unpaid, that "average pay" is a meaningless term. The only other way of giving meaningful relative values while avoiding CPI/RPI is to give the price of comparable things—"£100, the cost of a two-bedroomed house in Manchester" or similar.) ‑ iridescent 20:57, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Another excellent article. I do, however, have a very minor nit-pick that does not deter my support. It may just be me but part of the sentence in the Composition section "... images based on drawings Etty had sketched while outside in London ..." just feels a bit odd. SagaciousPhil - Chat 09:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Feel free to reword it. Basically, he'd spent his idle hours wandering around London sketching children playing and tradesmen at work, and rather than spend money on models for the crowd on the dockside just copied some of his previous sketches and coloured them in. ‑ iridescent 20:57, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support With my usual reservation of disliking this style with every bone in my body. Kish is fine for those who can afford it, but this is a lovely treatment that pulls no punches, and has a fine command of the literature. I am impress. Ceoil (talk) 01:54, 5 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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/The_Triumph_of_Cleopatra/archive1&oldid=1138473627"