| The Blacksmith's Shop | |
|---|---|
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| Artist | Joseph Wright of Derby |
| Year | 1771 |
| Location | Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby |
| The Blacksmith's Shop | |
|---|---|
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| Artist | Joseph Wright of Derby |
| Year | 1771 |
| Location | Yale Center for British Art |
| An Iron Forge | |
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| Artist | Joseph Wright of Derby |
| Year | 1772 |
| Location | Tate Britain |
The Blacksmith's Shop is a recurring theme of five paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby. The version in his hometown was originally completed in 1771.
Joseph Wright of Derby painted five paintings on the theme of a blacksmith's shop or a forge between the years 1771 and 1773. The Derby Museum version is of a blacksmith's shop where three men work to manufacture an iron or steel component. The presence of visitors and the nocturnal work is explained by the farrier working outside. Wright has imagined that a traveller has broken down on a journey and the farrier is therefore working by the light of a candle. [1] This device allows Wright to show off his skill and interest in light and shadow. [2] To the right of the picture is an idle man leaning on a stick. Nicholson notes that this person is not dealt with harshly but with respect. The man appears too old to work but offers gravitas to those that are. [1] Investigations of one of Wright's blacksmith's paintings has revealed the lengths that Wright went to achieve his image. Beneath the image of the ingot and hidden by layers of both yellow and white investigators found a small piece of gold leaf that Wright had placed there two centuries before. The gold is not thought to have added to the painting, but Wright obviously thought it might in some way. [3]
Later versions which involve a forge rather than a blacksmith's more traditional way of working are now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and in The Tate in London. In these the main figure is working with a power forge whilst he is observed by his family. The nocturnal nature of Wright's "night pieces" was different to his contemporaries. The real novelty was however in the subject matter. Water-powered forges were not new, but Wright was being innovative in proposing that these scenes could be the subject of a fine artist. For this reason Wrights paintings are frequently used as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution and The Enlightenment. Wright was an important figure in relation to the Lunar Society and Derby Philosophical Society whose members were shaping the development of Science and Engineering in England. [4] In 1772, Wright created a 44 by 52-inch variation on this theme called The Iron Forge which was sold to Lord Palmerston for 200 pounds. This version is still in the Palmerstone family. Another 41 by 55-inch version titled An Iron Forge viewed from without was sold to Empress Catherine of Russia. Catherine the great later bought two other Wright paintings; one was of fireworks and another was from his Vesuvius paintings, however the painting of the forge was considered the best of the three. [5]
Another 1771 version was titled The Blacksmith's Shop and this sold to Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne. It remained in the Melbourne family until it was purchased and given to Down House where it joined the collection in memory of Charles Darwin. This version is now in the Mellon collection.
An Iron Forge develops the idea of blacksmith's shop which is a craft that has changed little on hundreds of years. Forges seen in the 1772 pension show the addition of water-powered hammers that allow the forger to stand proud before his family. The painting is in the Tate. A similar painting of a forge but viewed from outside is in the Hermitage Museum. [6]
The 1771 painting was bought by the ArtFund and Derby Museum and Art Gallery in 1979 for approximately 69,000 pounds from the Greg family who had owned it since 1875. [7]
Joseph Wright, 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".
Derby Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Derby, England. It was established in 1879, along with Derby Central Library, in a new building designed by Richard Knill Freeman and given to Derby by Michael Thomas Bass. The collection includes a gallery displaying many paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby; there is also a large display of Royal Crown Derby and other porcelain from Derby and the surrounding area. Further displays include archaeology, natural history, geology, military collections and world cultures. The Art Gallery was opened in 1882.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of a number of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly reserved for scenes of historical or religious significance. Wright was intimately involved in depicting the Industrial Revolution and the scientific advances of the Enlightenment. While his paintings were recognised as exceptional by his contemporaries, his provincial status and choice of subjects meant the style was never widely imitated. The picture has been owned by the National Gallery in London since 1863 and is regarded as a masterpiece of British art.
Daniel Parker Coke, was an English barrister and Member of Parliament.
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, or the full title, A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery in which a lamp is put in place of the Sun, is a 1766 painting by Joseph Wright of Derby depicting a lecturer giving a demonstration of an orrery – a mechanical model of the solar system – to a small audience. It is now in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery The painting preceded his similar An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Peter Perez Burdett was an 18th-century cartographer, surveyor, artist, and draughtsman originally from Eastwood in Essex where he inherited a small estate and chose the name Perez from the birth surname of his mather, his maternal grandfather was the clergyman there. He would have been notable just for his many appearances in Joseph Wright's pictures but he was also involved with numerous projects including surveying the route for one of the major projects of the industrial revolution, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, in 1769. He has been described as "if not in the centre at least in the penumbra of the Lunar Society of Birmingham". He spent the last years of his life in Karlsruhe, avoiding debtors, but still active in German society. His German daughter married a Count.
William Tate was an English portrait painter who was a pupil and friend of Joseph Wright of Derby.
Romeo and Juliet: the Tomb Scene is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, completed by 1790, exhibited in 1790 and 1791, shown in the Derby Exhibition of 1839 in the Mechanics' Institute, and now displayed in Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The painting exhibits Wright's famed skill with nocturnal and candlelit scenes. It depicts the moment in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet when Juliet, kneeling beside Romeo's body, hears a footstep and draws a dagger to kill herself. The line is "Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!"
The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby originally completed in 1771 then reworked in 1795. The full title of the painting is The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher's Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers. It has been suggested that The Alchymist refers to the discovery of phosphorus by the Hamburg alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669. This story was often printed in popular chemical books in Wright's lifetime, and was widely known.
Miravan Breaking Open the Tomb of his Ancestors is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby originally completed in 1772.
Samuel Ward (1732–1820) owned property in Derby and Richmond in England. As a boy he was food taster to Bonnie Prince Charlie and was rewarded with a diamond ring which is now in the collection of Derby Museum and Art Gallery along with his 1781 portrait by Joseph Wright.
A Philosopher by lamplight is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. It is not known when Wright painted the picture, but it was first exhibited in 1769 in London with the Society of Artists. This was one of the earliest of many lamplight or candlelight paintings and portraits for which Wright is famed.
The Captive King is a sketch by Joseph Wright of Derby completed in 1772 or 1773. It depicts the French nobleman Guy de Lusignan held prisoner by Saladin. The sketch is thought to have been a preparation for the now-lost painting Guy de Lusignan in Prison.
The Captive, from Sterne is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby completed in 1774 and now in the National Gallery of Canada. Sterne's Captive, first exhibited by the artist in 1778, is a similar painting by Wright in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The latter painting resulted in a rare engraving, as its purchaser commissioned a print run of only twenty copies before the copper printing plate was destroyed. In 2012, Derby Museum commissioned another Captive painting from Emma Tooth.
Vesuvius in Eruption is the subject of a series of thirty paintings and at least one preliminary sketch by Joseph Wright of Derby, who travelled in Italy in the years 1773-1775. It appears that whilst Wright was in Italy Vesuvius was not erupting.
Dovedale by Moonlight, 1784, is one of five paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby which uses the picturesque valley of Dovedale as its subject. These paintings were sometimes made as pairs with one showing the view by day and the other by moonlight. Wright admitted that he had not observed this scene directly, "Moon lights & fire lights are but a sort of work with me for I cant with impunity go out at night and study the former, & the latter I have seen but once, and at a time too, when I thought not of painting such effects."
Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno is the subject of at least four paintings completed by Joseph Wright of Derby following his visit there in 1774. The paintings show the different lighting at different times of the day.
Richard Hurlstone or Richard Hurleston was a British portrait painter known for being a pupil of Joseph Wright of Derby. He went to Italy with Wright and his wife. He returned and died young after being hit by lightning on Salisbury Plain.
Judith Emilie Egerton was an Australian-born British art historian and curator. She specialised in eighteenth-century British art and, particularly, the work of George Stubbs.