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Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright ARA (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797), styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution".[1]

Joseph Wright

(1734-09-03)3 September 1734

Derby, England

29 August 1797(1797-08-29) (aged 62)

Derby, England

St Alkmund's Church, Derby

English

Wright of Derby

Painter

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Ann Swift
​
​
(m. 1773; died 1790)​

6

Wright is notable for his use of tenebrism, an exaggerated form of the better known chiaroscuro effect, which emphasizes the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. His paintings of the birth of science out of alchemy, often based on the meetings of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a group of scientists and industrialists living in the English Midlands, are a significant record of the struggle of science against religious values in the period known as the Age of Enlightenment.


Many of Wright's paintings and drawings are owned by Derby City Council, and are on display at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.[2]

(1774)

Vesuvius from Posillipo by Moonlight

Grotto by the Seaside in the Kingdom of Naples with Banditti, Sunset (1778) [14]

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

(1780) Dorking Museum, UK[15]

Peter Labilliere

(1784)

Indian Widow

Miss Mary Tunaley (1790–93) [16]

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

(1790) Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Romeo and Juliet: the Tomb Scene

(three versions, 1779 to 1785)

Virgil's Tomb

Georges de La Tour

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wright, Joseph". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

public domain

Barker, Elizabeth and Alex Kidson. Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool. Yale University Press, 2007.

Bemrose, William. The Life and Works of Joseph Wright, Commonly called 'Wright of Derby. Bemrose and Sons 1885.

Busch, Werner. Joseph Wright of Derby. Das Experiment mit der Luftpumpe: eine heilige Allianz zwischen Wissenschaft und Religion. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986.

Craske, Matthew. Joseph Wright of Derby, Painter of Darkness. Yale University Press, 2020.

Daniels, Stephen. Joseph Wright. Princeton University Press, 1999.

Edgerton, Judy. Wright of Derby. Exh. cat. Tate Gallery, 1990.

Fraser, David. Wright in Italy: Joseph Wright of Derby's Visit Abroad, 1773–5. Gainsborough's House, 1987.

Graciano. Andrew. "Art, Science and Enlightenment." PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2002.

Graciano, Andrew. Joseph Wright, Esq., Painter and Gentleman. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.

Graciano, Andrew. "'The Book of Nature is Open to All Men': Geology, Mining and History in Joseph Wright's Derbyshire Landscapes." Huntington Library Quarterly 68, no. 4 (2005): 583–600.

Graciano, Andrew. "Shedding New Botanical Light on Joseph Wright's Portrait of Brooke Boothby: Rousseauian Pleasure versus Medicinal Utility." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 67 no. 3 (2004): 365–380.

Nicolson, Benedict. "Addenda to Wright of Derby." Apollo 88 (November 1968), suppl. Notes on British Art 12, 1–4.

Nicolson, Benedict. "Wright of Derby: addenda and corrigenda." Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1,027 (October 1988): 745–58.

Nicolson, Benedict. Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 2 vols. Pantheon, 1968.

Solkin, David H. Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England. Yale University Press, 1993: pages 214–46.

Rosenblum, Robert. "Wright of Derby: Gothick Realist." Art News 59, no. 1 (March 1960): 24–7, 54.

Wallis, Jane. Joseph Wright of Derby. Derby Museum And Art Gallery, 1997.

Wright, Amina. Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond. Exh. cat. Holburne Museum, 2014.

Gallery of Joseph Wright paintings at Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Getty Museum profile

Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections

at the Art UK site

161 artworks by or after Joseph Wright of Derby

public domain audiobook at LibriVox

The Life and Works of Joseph Wright by William Bemrose