{"id":1606346,"date":"2025-12-16T11:45:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1606346"},"modified":"2025-12-16T11:45:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:45:40","slug":"exhibition-review-wright-of-derby-from-the-shadows-national-gallery-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2025\/12\/exhibition-review-wright-of-derby-from-the-shadows-national-gallery-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Wright of Derby’s Theater of Enlightenment at London’s National Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump<\/em>, 1768. The National Gallery Photographic Department<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A white cockatoo is on the verge of death as air is sucked from its glass trap. Two young girls look on, aghast. Maybe the croaking fowl is their pet? That unfortunate bird is the center of attention in Joseph Wright\u2019s 1768 painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump<\/i>. A beloved artwork in the U.K., the piece is a marquee draw in the National Gallery in London\u2019s new \u201cWright of Derby: From the Shadows\u201d exhibition. It is not as if Wright did not have alternatives to using the demise of a fine-looking bird for the image. A sealed paper bag would have inflated as oxygen was removed from the glass globe, for example. But that would have been boring, and Wright was a dramatist. Plus, none of this would be happening without the wild-haired pump operator looking out from the canvas. He is in charge. If he stopped the pump and allowed the air back into the glass, the bird would survive. Talk about tension.<\/p>\n

Born in the northern English town of Derby in 1734, Joseph Wright was working during the Age of Enlightenment. The air pump was a relatively new invention, a contraption that demonstrated that the atmosphere was something that could be manipulated, a radical idea in the eighteenth century. Until then, religion and ancient philosophy had explained what things were. Air was an Aristotelian element, an unchangeable substance that sat between earth and fire. So, amid the drama, Wright was also documenting the kind of scientific development that characterized the era\u2019s new thinking. His 1771 painting The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosophers Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers<\/i> shows the German alchemist Hennig Brand accidentally discovering phosphorus while trying to turn a base metal into gold. As with his air pump painting, Wright was laying out a key moment in science. Although Benjamin Franklin had been experimenting with lightning conduction since the 1750s, electricity had yet to become a source of light and power. So Hennig\u2019s incidental discovery\u2014that man could manufacture an artificial light source\u2014was another epochal lightbulb moment.<\/p>\n

The theme of light runs throughout the exhibition. There are more than 20 pieces on view, concentrating on Wright\u2019s candlelit work, the period when the artist used single sources of light to build atmosphere and anticipation. And with the light comes the dark. Wright\u2019s dense, flat shadows frame the action, bringing depth and theater to the fore. It is natural to compare his output with artwork by another great dramatist and master of light, Caravaggio. Both artists employed the dark-light schematic of chiaroscuro, although Wright tended toward tenebrism, a more contrast-heavy variation. Where Caravaggio\u2019s sense of tension stemmed from emotional turmoil and social v\u00e9rit\u00e9, Wright\u2019s work was more pastoral and less dangerous, unless you are a bird, despite his dramatic leanings. Caravaggio, of course, had painted his last works roughly one hundred years earlier. Nonetheless, Wright\u2019s work is stunning. Earthstopper on the Banks of the Derwent<\/i> from 1773 is a pastoral case in point. A man is filling in earths, also known as foxholes, to stop foxes from hiding in their dens during the next day\u2019s hunt along the River Derwent. As the digger toils, the night sky looms above. In A Philosopher by Lamplight<\/i>, painted around 1769, the philosopher stands outdoors, examining human bones in his quest to understand anatomy, lit by a single lamp\u2019s flame.<\/p>\n

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