The Midlander

He had neither Gainsborough's grace nor Reynolds' robust authority. Yet as much as any painter of his time, Joseph Wright of Derby captured the peculiar spirit of 18th century England. On the one hand, there was the century's sense of discovery and pride in scientific investigation, which resulted in a wealth of tools and inventions and, in due course, the Industrial Revolution. On the other, there was its almost mystic appreciation of nature. A rare exhibition of Wright's paintings, drawn entirely from the Paul Mellon Collection and currently on display at Washington's National Gallery, shows that Wright was marvelously attuned to both impulses.

He was a provincial painter with the good sense to remain one. Born in the small Midlands city of Derby in 1734, he remained there most of his life. But Derby, near the manufacturing towns of Birmingham and Sheffield, was an early center of industrialization, with an excitement all its own. Even as a child, Wright was fascinated by things mechanical. He made models of machines, clocks and guns, a tiny spinning wheel and a toy peep show. James Watt, the perfecter of the steam engine, John Wilkinson, the iron manufacturer who developed the cast-iron bridge, Sir Richard Arkwright, the wealthy cotton manufacturer who invented the spinning jenny, and Josiah Wedgwood, whose name is still synonymous with fine pottery, all lived near by.

The hardheaded industrialists of the Midlands provided Wright with a ready-made clientele. For his part, he found fascinating the scenes that more aristocratic painters scorned--a group of experimenters around an early air pump, the drama that the glaring light of a forge gives to blacksmith and bystanders. Light was an apt symbol for an age of enlightenment. Painter James Northcote, a contemporary, called Wright "the most famous painter now living for candlelights"--not to mention firelight and moonlight, which Wright often played off in the same picture, as he did in The Blacksmith's Shop.

Shimmering Sun. In 1773, Wright traveled to Italy and discovered the shimmering Italian sun. When he returned to England, the drama of nature replaced that of scientific investigation on his canvas. The 1790 Italian Landscape with its verdant hills touched with lavender is one of many done from recollection. If it lacks some of the vigor of Wright's candlelit scenes it is sophisticated enough for its time. The slightly arbitrary colors show a concern with pattern rather than strict representation. Whole hillsides are brushed in as relatively flat-areas set against the equally flat cliffs or gorges, both taking their shape from outline rather than detail--a technique that anticipated Cezanne, Matisse, and such modern landscapists as Milton Avery or Fairfield Porter.

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