Wright of Derby by Candlelight
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| Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, 1766. Derby Museum and Art Gallery |
The Getty Museum is assembling an exhibition of Joseph Wright of Derby's candlelight paintings for late 2026. Nocturnes of scientific experiments constitute the artist's best-known works. The artist also produced smaller genre scenes of two figures illuminated by a hidden candle. Julia Siemon, assistant curator of paintings at the Getty and recently appointed director of exhibitions and chief curator at Bard Graduate Center, is organizing.
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But I wonder if PETA will have something to say about it.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-wright-of-derby-an-experiment-on-a-bird-in-the-air-pump
https://huntington.org/exhibition/science-and-sublime-masterpiece-joseph-wright-derby
I love Wright of Derby's candlelight paintings.
2026 is gearing up to be a BIG year for British art masterpieces at The Getty.
We will all certainly have to make the trek to see the Derby exhibition plus Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Mai which should be up by then.
Can't wait...........
Their "A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery," of 1766, has colors so acid and unexpected they're fabulous. It's a big picture, though I don't know how big because the museum's website is wanting.
Yale British has another autograph version of the picture, of 1768, but much smaller, and in _grissaile_. Another unexpected approach.
This guy is cool.
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1176
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/114VF7
So very cool.
There's a good read on the Met's website, "The Rise of Pastel in the Eighteenth Century," by
Marjorie Shelley, from 2011...
https://www.metmuseum.org/articles/the-rise-of-pastel-in-the-eighteenth-century
And, no, to my knowledge, there are no grissaille pastels in the Met collection.
But the gallery card is instructive:
"Painted in grisaille, a monochrome executed in shades of gray, this is a highly finished copy of a larger painting in color, made to this small scale to serve as an exact guide for mezzotint engravers to reproduce the composition as a print."
This is the story of the day.
The "narrative turn" is taking hold.
Paris’ Centre Pompidou announces plan to acquire original comic art beginning with their major new exhibition on the graphic art form.
"For a century comic art has irrigated artistic creation, it has influenced major artists," --- Laurent Le Bon, President of the CP
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/a-philosopher-giving-that-lecture-on-the-orrery-in-which-a-lamp-is-put-in-place-of-the-sun-61182/search/2024--keyword:philosopher-lecturing-on-the-orrery--referrer:global-search
I laid them out side by side, and I see no discernable likeness between the two faces.
Of course, that's not to say the pastel is not Wright's, or that it wasn't intended for the grisaille. Rather, it could mean that the boy in the pastel never made it on to the painting.
I could be in error, possibly.