ARTS
Exhibition
Wright in Italy: Joseph Wright of Derby's Visit Abroad, 1773-75 (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury, till 20 September)
Fireworks from Derby
John Henshall
Visitors to the Gainsborough's House art gallery at Sudbury in Suffolk until 20 September can see a selection of works from a key period in the career of a hitherto largely neglected contemporary of Thomas Gainshorough, who is nonetheless a rising star in today's art market. He is Joseph Wright (1734-97), usually known as `Wright of Derby', who is best regarded for a series of unorthodox paintings of the scientific and industrial developments of his day. He is represented at this exhibition by products of a two-year European so- journ in 1773-75. It is the first major show of his work outside Derby since an exhibi- tion at the Arts Council in London in 1958.
Wright, the son of a Derby lawyer, trained in London under the portraitist Thomas Hudson, who also taught Reynolds. Wright established a successful portrait practice in Derby by his mid- twenties, then began painting scenes of contemporary scien- tific demonstrations which gave him ample scope to in- dulge his interest in lighting effects. He would record scenes like industrial interiors at night — whether smithies or early factories — which let him show illuminated figures in darkened interiors, an effect which can he traced back to the Italian master, Caravag- gio. He exhibited regularly in London from the mid-1760s.
The very titles of his earlier paintings set Wright apart from his contemporaries: 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery' (1776, Derby Art Gal- lery) is an entrancing study of a teacher and his students ruminating on the workings of a bygone clockwork planetar- ium; 'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump' (1768, National Gallery) portrays both a somewhat barbaric scientific dab- bling and a riveting spectacle. For inspira- tion in these works, Wright drew on his association with the Birmingham-based Lunar Society (Darwin was a later mem- ber) — a group of scientists and industrial- ists so called because they met monthly near full moon.
But Wright grew up in the 18th century, when artists were advised by their teachers to admire classical masters, and to repro- duce scenes and figures from great painters of the past. Thus it was that in November 1773 Wright, his wife and entourage sailed for Italy. It took three months and made Wright extremely sea-sick. He duly estab- `Belisarius Receiving Alms' (1775), by Joseph Wright of lished himself at Rome and joined a colony of British painters and students who gathered at the English Coffee House; George Romney and Jacob More were there. Wright's stay in Rome, so well exemplified in the Sudbury exhibition, gave him the chance to crown his own extraordinarily varied repertoire with a golden phase of classical inspiration, and the opportunity to try something quite new: the portrayal of fire. David Fraser, Derby's Keeper of Art, speaks in an engrossing catalogue of the artist's 'in- cendiary imagination'.
Among the oils, for example, are two contrasting yet complementary pictures, 'Firework Display at the Castel Sant'Ange- lo' (1774) which captures wonderfully the
luxurious cascade of man-made colour which was the annual firework show known as the Girandola, on the Tiber (the picture shows St Peter's, gloriously illumin- ated, in the background), and a scene Wright painted many times over, 'Vesu- vius' (1774-75), which he saw erupting on a trip to Naples. The Frenchman Jacques- Antoine Volaire set up shop near the volcano and painted little else, so popular a scene was it. In a letter to his brother Richard in Derby, Wright described the eruption as 'the most wonderful sight 10 nature'.
The Sudbury exhibition is a very strong one: the ink and pencil drawings are as striking as the oils, even if some are slightly stylised, treading well-worn paths: there are a number of drawings after Michel- angelo, for example. But there are also subjects like `Belisarius Receiving Alms (1775) on the legend of the Roman general caught up In conspiracy, blinded, and sent out to beg on the streets: I admired, too, the oil painting 'Virgil's Tomb by Moonlight',
painted after Wright arrived home, a romantic evocation of a highlight of the old Grand Tour which Wright saw on his trip to Naples.
Wright is now gaining a reputation he has long lacked. His paintings have always been acknowledged by those who knew him as distinctive and interesting, but he has suffered from the label of pro- vincial, and from the pre- eminence of men like Gains- borough. Five or six years ago, his works realised about Derby. £60,000. Since 1984, however, various, mainly British scenes have topped £500,000, and two, 'Mr and Mrs Coltman' (in the National Gallery) and 'Grotto with Banditti' (with Agnews), have fetched over £1 million each.
David Fraser attributes this rise to three factors: more American interest in 18th- century British art (and in paying for it). the late Benedict Nicholson's work on Wright (Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, 1968) and the fact that most major Wrights are already in public collections. so they come on to the market rarely. which automatically pushes up the price.
Couple all this with the fact that the Tate is planning a major Wright show for 1990, starting in London, then going on to Pans and the Louvre, and you can see that for a man who was previously written off as a spasmodically interesting up-country pain- ter who paid the price for not settling in London or Bath, art centres of the day, Joseph Wright is now enjoying a remark- able ascendancy. The Sudbury show, in the beautiful old Georgian house which has the distinction of being the only artist's birth- place open to the public in Britain, demon- strates precisely why.
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