Artist of the Enlightenment

There are receptive painters and enquiring painters, and Joseph Wright of Derby was one of the latter. He could almost be said to be the artist who best represents the Age of Enlightenment. In every sense. For what Wright painted was light and he used it in both its literal and symbolic sense. He was not the first to endeavour to capture the effects of light – Caravaggio was a notable exponent (it is possible that Wright knew the work of the northern Caravaggisti and Rembrandt) – and light had been used as long ago as the Renaissance to depict moments of spirituality. But what Wright depicted in his two greatest paintings was the illumination of our world by scientific knowledge and the excitement of scientific experiment.

Joseph Wright is not one of our better-known or more popular painters, although he could be said to head the list of second-rankers. However, this undeserved anonimity should change this year, for Wright is to be the subject of a large exhibition at London's Tate Gallery, which opens on February 7th and will represent every aspect of his work. The exhibition, sponsored by the British Land Company, will also be shown at the Grand Palais in Paris from May to July, where it will be interesting to see what the French make of this most un-roccoco of eighteenth-century artists, and then at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.