 From around this time onwards , while Etty still held to his belief that the purpose of art is to illustrate moral lessons , he began to abandon the literary , religious and mythological themes which had dominated his work . He began to paint still lifes , beginning with Pheasant and Peach ( likely to be the painting now called Dead Pheasant and Fruit ) ; in the 1840s he exhibited six in total , and painted many more . Etty was the first English painter to paint significant still lifes , which at the time were thought by the English a primarily Netherlandish form . Also for the first time , he began to paint a significant number of landscape paintings . Etty still continued to paint history paintings , but while he continued to produce highly acclaimed reworkings of his previous pictures , those works on fresh topics were generally poorly received . Etty 's decline in quality can possibly be attributed in part to London art dealers ; from 1835 dealer Richard Colls had become increasingly close to Etty , and by 1844 had a near @-@ monopoly on his work . As the importance of the landed gentry to the art market declined , the new purchasers of art were industrialists ; generally lacking in a classical education and with little interest in Old Masters , they preferred to buy works by then @-@ contemporary artists such as Etty , and relied on dealers to advise them . 
