Amandine Guerrero – Sandra Chevalier

Introduction

    Joseph Wright of Derby was a painter of the late XVIIIth century. But before going any further, it is important to say that a complete catalogue of the events of his life is not indispensable to understand his pictorial work. So, we decided to select only the biographic elements that we found particularly relevant to his work.

    Joseph Wright was born in 1734 in Derby, hence the title “of Derby” that is always attached to his name by art critics. He grew up in a middle-class background. It was in 1751 that he began his apprenticeship in the Art studio of Thomas Hudson where he studied for two years. His master was famous for his talent as a portraitist and for the precision of his technique. After completing his studies, Joseph Wright returned to Derby and painted his first portraits. They were portraits of the members of his family, of his friends, and of himself. But, unsatisfied with the quality of his work, he decided to go back at Hudson’s in 1756 where he stayed for fifteen additional months. And it is undoubtedly the qualities of his master as a portraitist which influenced the beginning of Wright’s career.

    But then, his work acquired a new dimension with the first public exhibition of his work organized by the Society of Artists in London which revealed the first of a series of paintings devoted to “scientific subjects” (labelled as “paintings with a candle”). In fact, Three persons observing a gladiator under the light of a candle was one painting among a few others like The Philosopher lecturing on a planetary (1766), or Experience on a Bird in the air Pump (1768), which were painted under the light of one single candle.

    This new style associating scientific subjects with a new treatment of light enabled Joseph Wright of Derby to be recognized for his originality, marking his transitory role between conventional neo-classicism and pre-romanticism with a new approach of light. It also showed the influence of Thomas Frye (1710-1762) on the painter with reminiscences of the Italian master Piazetta. In fact, he was one of the first British painters to use the “chiaroscuro effects” from a single source of light, thus showing the dramatic value of light and enhancing the contrasts between natural and artificial light. He associated this technique with the selection of subjects in relation to the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, the last major aspect of Wright of Derby’s life was his travel to Italy in 1774. During his stay in Rome, the painter was much impressed by the beauty of Roman antiques. This tour in Italy had a great impact on Derby’s evolution and it influenced his later artistic choices.

Pictorial Technique

    As said before, J. Wright went to Italy to study 16th and 17th century Italian painting. Although his trip influenced him, his major techniques remained the same for they corresponded to what interested him most:
                                                                                                                            - a solid organisation of forms
                                                                                                                            - light, above anything else.

    The materials Joseph Wright used most were a linen cloth, either traditionally woven or twilled. However, some of his landscapes were sometimes painted on wood panels. Like his contemporaries, Joseph Wright made his colours himself by blending several pigments, except for the landscapes with “special effects” in which the pigments were undiluted. The distinctive feature of his opaque mixings is that they are composed of vermilion and yellow of Naples, two very luminous pigments that are to be found in most of his skies. Another typical blend of colours is that of brown and green, which allowed him to create light effects.

I/ Before his trip to Italy

A)Portraits:

    Wright was imbued with the teachings of his master, Thomas Hudson. The whole surface of the painting was to be abundantly covered, but without anyone noticing the coat of primer (inevitably of a bright white from the 1760's onwards). This primer, also called “first coat”, was mainly used to smooth the surface of the painting. Thus, the primer was rarely apparent except in some paintings where some of it can be seen, usually to represent some water in landscape scenes.

    His portraits were made in two phases. For the first coat, Wright created the contours in flesh-coloured tones to provide the base of the surface. For the second coat, he blended more shiny pigments in order to colour and light up the face, as well as to accentuate the contour. The shades could then be rendered by glazes of transparent colour which increased the feeling of depth.

    However, the British climate was problematic, as oil-paint tends to dry very slowly under such conditions. Consequently, this second phase in the painter's work was often limited and consisted in putting light strokes on the forehead, nose and chin of the character, as well as pinkish patches on the cheeks. Indeed, glazes were less and less used as early as the 17 th century.

    He also sometimes superimposed several coats of colour, the first one being covered with a coat of oil or varnish . This method of superimposed coats was advocated by Hudson ; it is based on the fundamental principle that each colour, either transparent or opaque, is affected by the previous (or the first one) coat of painting underneath. It allowed the artist to create countless hues and effects, but was not a popular practice among the portraitists of the times.

 

    At the end of the decade, Wright modified his technique by adapting it to the effects he wanted to create, and this is best exemplified by the portrait of Mrs Ashton , and by that of Sarah Carver . In fact, the two women can be seen under an abundant yet cold light: a natural exterior one for Sarah Carver, and an artificial in-door one for Mrs Ashton who is sitting under the light coming from a window off the frame of the painting. Besides, the colours Wright used for the portrait of Sarah Carver are diffused because of the cold white light coming down from the looming clouds above her head.

    In two other paintings, in which the characters are exposed to a warm light, the palette as much as the technique are completely different. The portraits of Thomas Staniforth of Darnall, and The Two Little Girls with their Black Servant actually represent another approach of the treatment of light and colour. Thomas Staniforth, probably under the light of a lamp, is painted with cold yellows contrasting with pink-orange warm shades. Concerning The Two Little Girls and Their Black Servant, the tones used are lighter, and the warm shades are more diffused as the sitters are outdoors and supposed to be under a full natural light.

    These unusual shades were used according to a new process: to his long and descriptive brushstrokes, applied in diagonal, Wright added several series of little spots and points of paint. This style appeared several times in his 1760’s portraits. In The Two Little Girls with their Black Servant, for instance, the mixture used to paint the faces is not made up of sad flesh tones, but of luminous tinges of yellow and orange which give a warm tonality to the complexion of the subjects.

 

    Wright abandoned this style of portraits around 1771. However, it corresponds to an important phase in Wright’s technical evolution. This combination of expressive touches and new approach to colour marks his independence from Hudson’s limitations. A good illustration to this new phase in his oeuvre is Mr and Mrs Coltman, painted in 1771-1772.

    After applying a white primer, the painter started with the tones of the sky and sketched the major forms with red-brown tinges. Once this first layer was completely dry, he began to compose his work with the various colours of the painting. The characters were painted with a solid and homogenous paste which was spread with a thin brush (as regards the background, the paint was generously spread with a much thicker brush). Finally, the forms, colours and details were meticulously rendered with the relevant tinges spread by spots, little points, or light touches with a thinner brush. This process can also already be grasped in some of the backgrounds of Wright’s portraits produced from the late 1760s, and will be more fully developed 2 years later, when he started to devote his energy to landscapes proper.

    It is interesting to notice that a page of Joseph Wright’s accounts book entitled “The Contents of the Palette”, lists all the ranges of colours used by him, which shows how essential the codification of hues was in Wright’s case. The only painter who used a similar palette was Thomas Bardwell, which tends to prove that Wright had read Bardwell’s book entitled The Practise of Painting Perspective Made Easy (1756) and that it had left a major influence on his own art of painting.

B)Genre Paintings:

    Between 1762 and 1772, Wright started to paint night scenes, which was quite experimental for a painter of “light”. He nevertheless stuck to the same technique but most of the time applied a reddish brown tone over the primer. It was the first time that this colour was used in the early stages of Wright’s preparation of his paintings.

    In his first genre scenes, such as Experiment on a Bird in The Air Pump, the colours of the background range from grey-brown to dark red and those of the subjects from beige to red. In An Academy Lamplight (1768-69) or in The Blacksmith’s Workshop, the painting has become completely monochromatic, a layer of light-brown changing the tonality according to the thickness of the layer of paint or thanks to a tinge of white in the preparation.

 

In all Wright’s works (except for a couple of paintings), the first coat was more than a simple imprimatura; it was a preparation in which the contours were already set. Yet, Joseph Wright was not be the inventor of this technique, which Bardwell for instance owed to Rembrandt or Van Dyck, and since some recommendations had previously been made by William Aglionby in his book Choice Observations Upon the Art of Painting published in 1685 (reissued in 1719):

… peindre sur une toile, préalablement recouverte de couleurs qui sèchent vite telles que la céruse (blanc de céruse), ocre rouge et l’ombre (terre d’ombre), mélangées ensemble. Cette manière de peindre fait apparaître les couleurs plus éclatantes que toute autre, et paraît donner à votre peinture plus de vivacité et de douceur.

However, if Wright’s inspiration for his preparatory coats could be traced back to old masters, he was very inventive in terms of colour-mixings, depending on the overall effect he wanted to produce in each of his works. In general, before putting colour on the linen cloth, he applied on it a thin coat of varnish or oil when the preparation was dry, he proceeded from shadows to light colours, and from cold tones to warm ones.

 

 

    In two of his works, An Academy by Lamplight and The Blacksmith , the painter used an unusual technique to render the effect of the main source of light, respectively a metallic lamp, and a red hot metal bar. In the first example, the black colour of the metallic lamp is laid down on a sheet of gold and silver applied on a layer of a brown red preparation. In the second example, the successive layers of the iron bar are as follows: a thick layer of white applied on the preparation and covered with a gold sheet which, in turn, is covered with an opaque layer of yellow.

    In both examples, the golden leaf is not supposed to be perceptible to the naked eye. Its only function is to reflect the light through the next coat of paint and to contribute to the illusion of a brilliant material. But Wright does not seem to have used this method for the metallic light sources.

 

C)Landscapes:

    In one of his first landscape paintings, Earthstopper at the Bank of Derwent, Wright contented himself with the experience he received from painting portraits and genre paintings. The last stage of his career was already visible in a less elaborate form in The Portrait of the Coltman. This painting was to represent Wright’s quintessential style for several years. The slightest details, shades and variations in texture are rendered thanks to small points, light touches, and different layers of paint applied on the opaque colour with a little brush.

 

II/ After his trip to Italy:

A/ Portraits:

    The majesty and serenity of Wright’s last portraits, at a technical level, are due to both the development and improvement of the second stage of creation, and to a return to the traditional layers of preparation he used at the beginning of his career, as exemplified in the portrait Brooke Boothby.

    During the last decade of Wright’s career, the style proves to be freer and more intuitive than before his stay in Italy, with a subtle mixing of colours and nuances. By the end of his life, Wright used a thinner kind of paint covered on an extremely light preparation of neutral brown colour.

B/Landscapes:

    The landscapes of the post-Italian period in Derby’s life present a large range of technical devices. Derby, contrary to Gainsborough in particular, took time to develop a more uniform style. Mainly because of his interest in the structure of light effects, he tended to treat each part of the landscapes separately and modified his technique according to the subject he wanted to paint. He generally proceeded in three phases:

1- Organizing space and laying out the basic forms before sketching the main figures in the painting.
2- Selecting the different proportions while imposing the second layer of paint.
3- Working on the texture of specific surfaces and on the various light effects intended.

    This is particularly relevant in the last landscape paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby. He started with the skies with thick layers of paint that directly covered the primer, and which in spite of their opacity kept their luminosity, undoubtedly thanks to white tinges. The same technique was used by Wright to paint his intermediate plans. Even if the preparation was not exactly the same for the series on the Vesuvius in which the source of light did not come from above in the sky, but from the bowels of the earth. The intensity of light is concentrated on the volcano top and its surroundings. Finally, concerning the foregrounds, Wright always proceeded in the same manner, with expressive touches of opaque colours in brown and rose tones. And the whole scene was then covered with a layer of glaze to enhance the colours and the intensity of the scene.

    By the end of his life, Wright applied the paint with more even and uniform brushstrokes. Even the first plans were painted with a glaze, as in The Lake of Albano and The Lake of Nemi. He remained sensitive to the technique of superimposition of layers of paint enabling to represent a great variety of topographic details and light effects.

 

C/ Genre Paintings:

The last genre scenes are of a great variety. In The Indian Widow, Wright resorted again to the brown red layer preparation he used before going to Italy, but in a softer and finer manner. It can be seen through the last layer of paint and gives a dramatic tonality to the painting.

 

III-Joseph Wright of Derby and Science

    Joseph Wright of Derby chose various kinds of subjects for his paintings: society paintings, self-portraits, and landscapes. But he mainly drew his fame from his genre paintings with a scientific theme. A Philosopher Lecturing on a Planetary and Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1766 & 1768) are probably Wright’s most famous paintings and represent a synthesis of art, science and philosophy.

    The extreme originality of the representation and of the subject reflects the action and interests of a group of friends and patrons of Wright’s. Some of them were members of a local association of philosophers and scientists known under the name of “Lunar Society”(established in 1764-1765). In fact, they did experiment and discussed the new discoveries of the times, which were linked to electricity, medicine and other subjects concerning scientific and technical research and progress. Some of the members of this society were famous for their industrial activities: Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, but also Dr Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley, a chemist and a theologian.

    The concerns of the “Lunar Society” followed the Enlightenment movement which developed in Europe in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. The characters on the two paintings embody this complete change of perceptions to scientific, cultural and technological changes through their physical appearances. They manifest reactions of curiosity, fascination, wonder or awe in front of what they are observing.

    So, Wright was a good deal influenced by the “Lunar Society”. More particularly, two members of the association proved to be of a major influence on Wright’s artistic choices:

- John Whitehurst (1713-1788), a clock maker and the inventor of instruments of precision, portrayed by Wright in 1782.

- Dr Erasmus Darwin who was particularly interested in research concerning electricity, meteorology, geology…

    Both experiments represented on these two paintings were tools used to popularise scientific discoveries among the public. The theory of gravitation represented by the planetary reduced the laws which govern the movements of the planets into a few mathematical operations, and thus enabled to conceive the world as an ordered and harmonious system. Of course the view Men had on themselves, on their role within the universe was completely modified by these new laws. And the observers of the planetary convey these drastic changes through their physical expressions. The curiosity on the faces of the children, the deep meditation in which the two women are plunged, emphasize the feeling that Man is a very tiny element in this endless universe. And we can find such feelings of fascination, wonder and awe in front of the Newtonian vision of the universe, in the works of poets and writers of the times, such as Addison who thought that the laws established by Newton underlined the omnipotence and wisdom of God who had created this world. The same aspect can also be found in James Thompson’s work. The same theme is to be found in the other painting in which the audience is directly confronted to the violence of death provoked by the natural law which conjures up visions of the SUBLIME, for the minute character of Man underlines the immensity of the universe and the impossibility to represent it as it really is.

 

Conclusion

    In conclusion, we can thus say that Wright’s technique consists in a clever superimposition of layers of colour, each one being composed of interesting and inventive mixings of several opaque and transparent pigments. He learned the basis of his technique from Hudson during his apprenticeship. However, Wright’s ease and fluidity were such that he could develop his own style with a strong emphasis on the sensational impact of his images.