Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, also known as The Misses Williams-Wynn, is a portrait of Charlotte and Mary Williams-Wynn, commissioned in 1833 by their father, the Welsh Conservative politician Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn. Generally well received when first exhibited at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, it proved successful in gaining the William Etty - until then known almost exclusively for history paintings and for historical and mythologically-themed subjects, most frequently containing nude figures - further portrait commissions.
Charlotte (16 January 1807 - 26 April 1869), shown standing, never married and is remembered as a letter-writer and diarist. Mary (2 March 1808 [?] - 21 April 1869) had married Member of Parliament James Milnes Gaskell in 1832 - so she was no longer a "Miss Williams-Wynn", as the alternative title asserts - and the couple would have four children; the Vogue editor Anna Wintour is one of their descendants. The sisters died within five days of each other in 1869, and the painting was inherited by Mary's family.
After its initial appearance at the Royal Academy in 1835 and a retrospective exhibition of Etty's work in 1849, the painting was not shown publicly for one-hundred and sixty years. In 1982, a private collector purchased the piece from Mary Williams-Wynn's great-granddaughter. It remained in that collection until its 2009 acquisition by the York Art Gallery - York being the place of the artist's birth - where it forms part of a major collection of Etty's work.
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