Victorian artist William Etty is best known in York today for his voluptuous nudes (some of them on display in the city art gallery) and for his campaign to save York’s historic walls.

The popular account, according to biographer Leonard Robinson, is of a lone objector battling single-handedly against a philistine local authority to preserve the city’s medieval walls and gateways.

But Etty was no ordinary objector, Mr Robinson makes clear. He was a famous man – famously preferred by the Royal Academy over John Constable.

This is a scholarly account of Etty’s life, works and times that runs to almost 500 pages.

In his own time, this local boy made good was considered by many to be a finer artist than not only Constable but also Sir Joshua Reynolds. Today he is virtually unknown outside York. But as the lavish illustrations in Mr Robinson’s book reveal, at his best he could be an artist of rare power.

•The book is on sale at the City Art Gallery at £45, or £35 to the Friends of the gallery.