 After the success of The Combat , Etty continued with his preferred theme of history paintings containing nudity ; of the 15 pictures he exhibited at the Royal Academy during the 1820s ( including Cleopatra , Pandora and The Combat ) all but one contained a nude figure . He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828 , at that time the most prestigious honour available to an artist . The Combat was the first very large work attempted by Etty , and its success prompted him to produce further works on a similar scale over the rest of his career ; he produced nine very large paintings illustrating moral themes throughout his career . As time went by his canvases came to be increasingly dominated by nude women . 
