IT'S a fair bet that had he been alive today, the celebrated York artist William Etty would have been taking a keen interest in the proposed Coppergate Riverside development. Yesterday Once More can't, of course, pretend to know what his views on the proposed shopping centre would have been.

But a letter he wrote to a local newspaper in 1825 gives a hint how close to his heart was the area around Clifford's Tower.

"He was one of the first conservationists," says York Civic Trust chairman John Shannon. "In 1825 he wrote a letter to the papers protesting about a proposal to pull down Clifford's Tower. He afterwards described that letter as the 'first stone I threw at the vandals'.

No excuse is needed for looking at the life of York's most successful painter, who was also one of the city's great conservationists. But if we did need an excuse, there are two to hand.

Etty was in the news recently after it was announced one of his paintings, Seated Nude, would be among the possessions of the late screen and stage star Sir Ralph Richardson to go under the auctioneer's hammer to raise cash for actors fallen on hard times.

There are also plans afoot to commemorate his life and contribution to the heritage of York by putting up a plaque to him near the new City Screen - which is built virtually on the site of the house where he lived towards the end of his life.

According to Michael Powell, the retired manager of York University's Central Hall, who has been interested in Etty for years and who wrote a brief life of the painter which now hangs in a panel in the City Screen, Etty was one of seven children born above the Feasegate shop of confectioner and gingerbread maker Matthew Etty and his wife Ester in 1787.

In his account of Etty's life, Mr Powell quotes lines from the painter's autobiography, which make it clear art had gripped his imagination from a very young age.

"My first panels on which I drew were the boards of my father's shop; my first crayon a farthing's worth of white chalk," Etty wrote. "My pleasure amounted to ecstasy when my mother said next morning if I were a good boy I should use some colours, mixed with gum water. I was so pleased I could scarcely sleep."

In 1798, though, a painter's life seemed remote. Etty was apprenticed to Hull printer Robert Peck, publisher of the Hull Packet, and it was only thanks to a 'bountiful and benevolent uncle' - a rich banker - that he was eventually able to go to London, where he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1806.

It was the beginning of a career that led to fame and fortune. At his peak Etty was more highly regarded than his contemporary Constable. When he was elected to the Royal Academy in 1825 it was at Constable's expense, Etty securing 18 votes to his rival's five.

His reputation at the time, says York City Art Gallery curator Richard Green, rested largely upon his ambitious 'historical' paintings - grand, large scale works on an epic or biblical theme which were supposed to be 'morally uplifting'.

It's his nudes he's best known for today, of course. He painted hundreds - if not thousands - of them in the course of his career, portraits of men and women painted from models posing for still life classes at the Royal Academy.

He used the paintings - many of them little more than sketches - as a 'databank' from which to copy the figures which populate his huge history paintings, says Mr Green.

So there was, at least in theory, a higher moral purpose behind them. That didn't stop Etty from being vilified by many of the critics of the day, who accused him of indecency.

There's certainly a voluptuous, not to say sensuous, look to the way Etty painted the naked human form - especially in paintings such as the Rape Of The Sabine Women, in which scantily-clad women of Rubensesque proportions are being mauled by Roman men in armour. Even Mr Green admits that painting could be seen as a little 'kinky'.

ETTY was a lifelong bachelor and was believed to have remained celibate - but did he enjoy painting the naked female form? Mr Green says the artist always insisted his work had a serious purpose. "I think one has to take him at his word," he adds.

Etty's career during his lifetime wasn't affected by the press censure. He dismissed his critics as 'noodles' and remained hugely popular, acquiring wealth and fame. In 1849, the year of his death, he was accorded the rare honour of a one-man exhibition at the Society of Arts in London.

After his death, though, he rapidly went out of fashion. Today, other than in York, he's little more than a footnote in British art history. "He's almost lost in comparison to people like Turner and Constable," Mr Green admits.

That's not to say Etty wasn't a good painter: merely that he's not fashionable. He was good, Mr Green says - though some of his best works were the portraits of friends he painted on his many visits to York, which were often not for exhibition at all. Some of these, such as his portrait of John Harper hanging among nearly 40 other Ettys at the Art Gallery, have a penetrating quality absent from his more formal work, which could lack imagination, Mr Green admits.

Nevertheless, he was certainly York's most successful artist - and there was no doubt that throughout his life he retained a love of the city in which he was born.

Although most of his work was done in London, he made frequent visits to York and it was here that he returned, still a bachelor, in 1846 when he decided to retire.

He bought a house which stood next to the Guildhall on the site now occupied by the City Screen cinema - near to which a plaque in his memory will be placed, probably some time later this year - and in 1848 he settled there. Sadly, he died from congestion of the lungs just a year later.

If he'd never been a painter at all, Etty would still be remembered for his conservation work, says John Shannon. After his 1825 letter about Clifford's Tower, he continued to take a close interest in the city's architectural heritage.

He founded the York Footpaths Association in 1829, and in 1832 was part of the successful campaign to save Bootham Bar from destruction. He was also involved in the fight to save Walmgate Bar and barbican, says John Shannon, and helped promote the city's new School of Design. The historian Stacpoole says he was "in every sense a worthy of York."

Appropriately enough, the famous statue of Etty standing in front of the city art gallery faces Bootham Bar, which the painter did so much to help save.

John Shannon awards Etty the ultimate accolade. "He was a man after my own heart," he says. "If he had been alive today, he would have been chairman of the civic trust, not me!"