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The Wright stuff

Joseph Wright's career coincided with the peak of the Industrial Revolution

ART AND SCIENCE The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone by Joseph Wright

Born on September 3, 1734 in Derby, a small city in Central England, Joseph Wright was given the name of Wright of Derby by the Society of Artists' Exhibitions in the 1760s to distinguish him from the Liverpool artist Richard Wright and the American artist Joseph Wright.

The third son of a lawyer and town clerk, Wright was interested in painting and went to London to study under portrait painter Thomas Hudson who was also Joshua Reynolds's master. Wright trained under Hudson for two years from 1751 and a further 15 months in 1756.

He returned to Derby and quickly established himself as an artist. He travelled to Italy in 1773 and returned in September 1775. While he was in Rome he witnessed the eruption of the Vesuvius. The volcano so fascinated him that he painted over 30 pictures of it. The fireworks in Italy also caught his fancy and he began to explore the effect of light and shade.

After an unsuccessful stint at portrait painting in Bath, Wright returned to Derby where he spent the rest of his life. Though he was an accomplished portrait painter, it was his scientific paintings that have garnered him notice and fame.

Painting at the peak of the Industrial Revolution, his compositions with the dramatic play of light and shade combined the realism of machinery with a romanticism of the age. His most famous paintings include A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery in which a Lamp is Put in Place of the Sun and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.

Wright counted as his friends members of the Lunar Society, a group of philosophers, scientists and engineers. The group included James Watt (who invented the steam engine) and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin. The senior Darwin was a close friend as well as physician to Wright who suffered from asthma and chronic depression towards the end of his life.

Wright married Hannah Swift in 1773 and the couple had six children, three of whom died in infancy. Hannah died in 1790. Wright stayed with his two daughters and painted till the end, which came on August 29, 1797.

MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER

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