Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm

Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm (also known as Fair Laughs the Morn and Youth and Pleasure) is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1832 and currently in Tate Britain. Etty had been planning the painting since 1818–19, and an early version was exhibited in 1822. The piece was inspired by a metaphor in Thomas Gray's poem The Bard in which the apparently bright start to the notorious misrule of Richard II of England was compared to a gilded ship whose occupants are unaware of an approaching storm. Etty chose to illustrate Gray's lines literally, depicting a golden boat filled with and surrounded by nude and near-nude figures.

Etty felt that his approach to the work illustrated a moral warning about the pursuit of pleasure, but his approach was not entirely successful. The Bard was about a supposed curse on the House of Plantagenet placed by a Welsh bard following Edward I of England's attempts to eradicate Welsh culture, and critics felt that Etty had somewhat misunderstood the point of Gray's poem. Some reviewers greatly praised the piece, and in particular Etty's technical abilities, but audiences of the time found it hard to understand the purpose of Etty's painting, and his use of nude figures led some critics to consider the work tasteless and offensive.

The painting was bought in 1832 by Robert Vernon to form part of his collection of British art. Vernon donated his collection, including Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm, to the National Gallery in 1847, which, in turn, transferred it to the Tate Gallery in 1949. It remains one of Etty's best-known works, and formed part of major exhibitions at Tate Britain in 2001–02 and at the York Art Gallery in 2011–12.

William Etty, the seventh son of a York baker and miller, had been an apprentice printer in Hull. On completing his seven-year apprenticeship at the age of 18 he moved to London "with a few pieces of chalk crayons", and the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters. He enrolled in the Schools of the Royal Academy of Arts, studying under renowned portrait painter Thomas Lawrence. He submitted numerous paintings to the Royal Academy over the following decade, all of which were either rejected or received little attention when exhibited.

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