Derby 1734 - 1797
Neo-Classicism
Britain
500,000 – 3,000,000 USD +
Joseph Wright of Derby was one of the most original of British eighteenth-century artists.
Born in the provinces, Wright’s work has a surprisingly Continental éclat which sets him apart from the bread and cheese of more mainstream British artists. He associated with men of science and his subjects often reflect interest in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution.
Like all British artists, Wright needed to keep up his income through portraiture and landscape more than subject pictures. The portraits, mostly of the upper-middle and professional class and country gentry, are more direct, brightly lit and less flattering than those demanded by the more aristocratic clientele in London. For example, his Anna Ashton (University of Liverpool, Liverpool) painted in the 1760s shows a socially prominent Liverpudlian in pastoral guise, probably influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch Arcadian portraiture. The sitter is brightly illuminated and the fact that without being ugly she is no beauty is not disguised. This was doubtless perfectly acceptable to no-nonsense northern taste. His later portrait of the great pioneer of the Lancashire cotton industry Richard Arkwright (Private Collection), with his prominent pot belly is equally unvarnished in interpretation. Wright’s portrait of his son with wife and child reveals the elegant gentrification of second-generation wealth.
Selected artworks
Further Reading
Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, exh. cat., London, 1990.
Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Light, London, 1968.
William Bemrose, The Life and Works of Joseph Wright, A.R.A., Commonly Called “Wright of Derby”, London, 1885.
Notable Exhibitions
London, The National Gallery, Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, 7 November 2025 – 10 May 2026. Curated by Jon King.
Florence, Le Gallerie Degli Uffizi, Wright of Derby. Art and Science, 2 December 2020 – 22 January 2021. Curated by Alessandra Griffo.
Minneapolis, Walker Art Gallery, Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool, 17 November 2007 – 24 February 2008; travelled to New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 22 May – 31 August, 2008.
London, Tate Gallery, Wright of Derby, 7 February – 22 April 1990; travelled to Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 17 May – 23 July 1990; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6 September – 2 December 1990. Curated by Judy Egerton.