Notes
The phrase “of Derby” was added to distinguish him from the Liverpool artist Richard Wright.
Among those he knew who were freemasons: John Whitehurst lived on the same side of the street as him. Erasmus Darwin became Wright’s doctor and friend; Wright depicted him with a quill pen when he had just finished The Botanic Garden. Darwin and Priestley upheld that alchemy was a progressive, materialistic religion, much less benighted than the times’ religiosity. Gisborne and Wedgwood were also friends. See Stephen Daniels, Joseph Wright, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999, 29.
Such as Catherine the Great, or Earl Ferrers, elected Fellow of the Royal Society for his observations on the movements of Venus, and Grand Master of the English freemasons of the Lodge of Strict Observance in 1762-64.
A temple with arched galleries and ionic columns surrounds an ancient nymph in the Academy by Lamplight, a temple is topped with a pediment in the Air Pump. A mad scientist presides over what could be interpreted as a seance, in front of the entrance of the Holy of Holies. The scene smacks of necromancy, or sadism. A great priest of sorts, violently lit up from below, with a white mane and a wild hypnotic look in his eyes, has the power of life and death over a bird trapped in an air pump.
Grottoes by the seaside depicted by Wright include at least three in the Gulf of Salerno.
He actually had not managed to view it in Naples. In The Eruption of Vesuvius, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples, next to a greenish gleaming sea and moon, a cone of incandescent lava projects fire radiating in a blazing halo, which acts as a vertical projection of the horizontal oval of the crater, thereby establishing an equivalence between the telluric world and the atmospheric world. As Wright climbed Mount Vesuvius he mentioned his old geologist friend John Whitehurst to his brother: “When you see Whitehurst, tell him I wished for his company when on Mount Vesuvius his thoughts would have centered in the bowels of the mountain, mine skimmed over the surface only”. Jane Wallis, Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734-1797, Derby: Derby Museum and Art Gallery, 1997, 14. Whitehurst’s treatise suggests the existence of a vast subterranean sea of fire beneath the Earth’s surface, occasionally bursting here and there into volcanoes.
Hamilton drew parallels between both: “it is impossible to describe the beautiful appearance of these Girandolas of red hot stones far surpassing the most astonishing fire-work” (Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, 2 vols., The Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York: Pantheon Books, 1968, 80).
The art of pyrotechnics, imported from Italy and influenced by Baroque theatre, appealed to all Europeans in the 18th century. The fireworks displays launched from the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome were a major tourist attraction. The Annual Girandola draws its name from a revolving wheel on the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo where the firework rockets were launched. See also at least nine Cottages on fire, as well as Fire at a Villa seen by Moonlight, probably in the Roman Campania.
See Arkwright’s Cotton Mills by Night (c.1782-83), oil on canvas, 99.7x125.7cm, private collection.
The layer-structure of the iron bar is as follows: on top of the dead coloring is applied thick lead white, on which is laid a gold leaf, which in its turn is completely covered by an opaque layer of Naples yellow paint. Rica Jones in Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1990, 177. This technique was not used more than twice. It should be noted that Naples yellow is a traditional pigment appropriate to the rendering of light, texture and substance because it can offer several shades of brightness ranging from impasto to glazing.
Such as Smith’s Forge then believed to be by the Haarlem painter Adriaen Brouwer which must have inspired Wright, be it via James Macardell’s mezzotint.
In eighteenth-century Britain, even if it was thought that economic progress went hand in hand with greater refinement, it was also feared that too great a prosperity was likely to induce self-satisfaction, complacency in a people ready to rest on its laurels, a fate which had befallen Roman empires to which Britain was often compared. This type of cyclical process resonated with Wright’s bipolar condition, i.e. feverish energy alternating with periods of lethargy.
For these last two paragraphs, see Solkin.
An Iron Forge (1772), oil on canvas, 121.9x132.1cm, Lord Romsey, Broadlands Collection.
Although it highlights a magnified pre-victorian pater familias, and not the Christian Mother in her glory.
Other references borrowed from religious paintings: the children of the Orrery recall putti. According to Nicolson, the Gladiator evokes the Christ in Emmaüs by Volmarijn. In the Air Pump, the mad scientist who looks like some hypnotizing wizard has his index raised like that of God giving life to Adam in the Creation of Michelangelo, the air pump acting as a central cross on the experimental altar. The Alchemist combines Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, Saint Jerome in prayer or other transfixed saints. The face of the protagonist is elated, transfigured by the phosphorescent light. The moon itself resembles a host.
If religious allusions are secularized, it may rather be to draw light into the human realm, confer human qualities to it, and even start giving its authorship to man. What emits light in the demonstration scenes or the forges is not the traditional sacred character or memento mori, but the object of the scientific experiment or industrial scene. Even in Wright’s night scenes that do not involve science or industry, artifacts―i.e. objects invented by man―emanate light. If for some, natural phenomena and the explanation of its causes testified above all to the power, the beauty and the order of divine creation, for others, the instruments of experimental philosophy proved the importance of science and showed man using the forces of nature as he willed. In Wright’s paintings, the Christian God seems rather outshined by man’s desire for knowledge and by his ambition to decipher the rational structures and mechanisms of the universe.
Wright exhibited at the Academy every year from 1778 to 1782, and was elected as an ARA or an associate in 1781. In 1783, after an argument with the Royal Academy about the poor positions of his paintings with the hanging committee, he was defeated in the election for full academician status.
“But see far off the modest Wright retire!
Alone he rules his Element of fire;
Like meteors darting through the gloom of the night
His sparkles flash upon the dazzled sight
Our eyes with momentary anguish smart
And nature trembles at the power of art.
May thy bold colour claiming endless praise,
For ages shine with undiminish’d blaze,
And when the fierce Vesuvio burns no more,
May his red deluge down his canvas pour!” [My emphasis] (Hayley quoted by Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, 2 vols., The Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Pantheon Books, 1968, 142)
The chiaroscuro connects Wright patently with past “golden makers” such as Gerrit van Honthorst or Rembrandt van Rijn.
See the frames of Girl Reading a Letter (c.1767-70), oil on canvas, 76x61cm, Two Young Boys Fighting over a Bladder (c.1767-70), oil on canvas, 91.5x71.2cm, Young Woman Reading a Letter by Candlelight (c.1760-66), oil on canvas, 76x61cm.
For more information on Wright’s frames, see Paul Mitchell, “Wright’s Picture Frames”, in Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1990, 181-196.
Rica Jones explored the samples of cross-sections of the layers of paint. Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1990, 268.
This hidden source of light is associated with infatuation. The light is of utmost importance, and no wonder: those who hold the power of light can create composition and space, and thus invent realities. And men are thereby vested with new and extraordinary powers.
Wright called this work The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers. Phosphorus was first discovered in 1676, and stimulated the research of Robert Boyle (1627-91). Influenced by Thomas Wyck (or Teniers), Wright also drew from Macquer’s account of manufacturing phosphorus, as well as Burdett’s personal advice.
Esotericism is replaced by rational considerations, or rather a certain mundane atmosphere. If a certain baroque theatricality underlies the painting, the scene is rather of Flemish inspiration if one looks at the precise and humdrum description of a profusion of banal and run-of-the-mill objects.
Often we do not see the source of light in Wright’s depicted scenes: light issues from behind in the Gladiator and the Orrery. It is never foregrounded, but merely reflected by the objects next to it and the enraptured faces.
In The Hermit Studying Anatomy, in a grotto, against a backdrop which includes a mini-Styx, the hermit muses over the passing of time and life’s transience: when its wick is spent, the lamp will be extinguished.
Deluded by a false fancy, overcome by greed, he broke open the tomb, only to discover the treasure which he has now forfeited was the eternal repose that follows a good life. The original source of the story is elusive. Wright copied his literary source in his Account Book. Story from an Eastern tale? In fact, his source is probably from a volume entitled Letters concerning Taste (1755) by John Gilbert Cooper. The hanging lamp is turning its back to tend the low light over the tomb. See also Indian Widow: a Funeral Pyre. Life is given to painting by light and inert matter, fire and ashes.
The Young Corinthian (1783-84), oil on canvas, 106.3x130.9cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. The Neoclassical profiles are flattened as on a low relief or as on a canvas. The silhouette of the lover is actually inspired by an antique low relief that Wright had sketched in Rome. The Corinthian maid is sometimes called Dibutades, from her father’s name. During neoclassicism (c.1770-1820), this legend inspired John Hamilton Mortimer, Alexander Runciman and David Allan (Origin of Painting). Wright wrote to Hayley: “I have painted my picture from your idea”. (Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1990, 134). He painted this picture for Wedgwood, hence the potter’s oven, with, as a companion picture, that of Penelope.
The daughter of the potter Butades de Sicyon, Dibutades, was in love with a young man. Since this young man was going abroad, she came up with the idea of outlining the shadow of his face projected onto the wall by the light of a lantern; her father applied clay to the outline and hardened it in fire. Pliny links this legend to the art of modelling, and the drawing capacity of shadows to the origin of painting. The Corinthian maid was moved by love to invent the art of portraiture. Inspired by an eroticizing shadow, the aim of the drawing is to act as a mnemonic aid, a makeshift, a substitute of the absent loved one. This propitiatory drawing retains the presence of the loved one to a certain extent, warding off death, especially if it remains vertical: here lays not he. By fixing him forever, by making him unreal, the girl paradoxically immortalizes his image. Light and shadow via a love story were the makings of art.
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