Joseph Wright of Derby

Works by this Artist

Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768

Eruption of Vesuvius
Joseph Wright of Derby, 1776

Background

son of a lawyer

Studies

with Thomas Hudson (1751-53, London)

Career

portrait painter

1781 – elected Associate of the Royal Academy, where he exhibited regularly

Travels

Italy (1773-74)

Commissions from

John Boydell (Shakespeare Gallery)

Important Artworks

Self-Portrait, c. 1753 (Derby Museum)

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, 1766 (Derby Museum)

The Old Man and Death, 1773 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford)

Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples, c.1776-80 (Tate, London). He painted over 30 views of Vesuvius between 1775 and 1795.

Sir Brooke Boothby, 1781 (Tate, London)

Corinthian Maid, 1783-84 (National Gallery of Art, London)

The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching the Arms of Her Deceased Husband, 1785 (Derby Museum)

Readings

Duro, Paul. 'Great and Noble Ideas of the Moral Kind': Wright of Derby and the Scientific Sublime (Wiley, 2010)

Edgerton, Judy. Wright of Derby. Exhibition catalogue. London: Tate, 1990

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