Wright, Joseph
Wright, Joseph
byname WRIGHT OF DERBY (b. Sept. 3, 1734, Derby, Derbyshire,
Eng.--d. Aug. 29, 1797, Derby), English painter who was a pioneer in
the artistic treatment of industrial subjects. He was also the best
European painter of artificial light of his day.
Wright was trained as a portrait painter by Thomas Hudson in the
1750s. Wright's home was Derby, one of the great centres of the birth
of the Industrial Revolution, and his depictions of scenes lit by
moonlight or candlelight combine the realism of the new machinery with
the romanticism involved in its application to industry and
science. His pictures of technological subjects, partly inspired by
the Dutch followers of
Caravaggio,
date from 1763 to 1773; the most
famous are
The Air Pump (1768) and
The Orrery (c. 1763-65). Wright
was also noted for his portraits of English Midlands industrialists
and intellectuals.
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994]
Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump
The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers Stone
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