An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump: Joseph Wright of Derby
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 Baroque painting by English artist Joseph Wright of Derby.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump Analysis
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) is an unforgettable painting by Joseph Wright of Derby depicting a modern scientific experiment in the highly dramatic manner traditionally reserved for religion, myth, and history.
What we are seeing in An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
As the title tells us, an experiment is being performed on a bird, a grey cockatiel. The animal is trapped inside a tuberous glass vessel standing on top of a lintel through which — we realize because of the cable we see to its left — the air is injected as well as extracted by means of a tube. The entire structure is standing on a polished table inside what looks like a familiar room.
The experiment is in fact surrounded by several men, who are likely engineers or natural philosophers, but also a woman and several children. We readily assume that the air pump of which the experiment consists is being tested in a family home.
As the boy to the right, who is pulling the curtains, helps us realize, it is night outside (the moon that we espy being perhaps a token of the Lunar Society, a social club within which the artist enjoyed connections).
A candle, situated beyond the glowing bowl in the lower middle of the painting, is the single, strong source of light in the scene. It is by means of that candle that a strong chiaroscuro permeates the picture, opposing areas of light to areas of pitch dark, giving strong characterizing lines to almost every human face, and excluding from sight all the marginal spaces.
Chiaroscuro – dark and light
The painting is therefore one of Joseph Wright’s candlelit studies, a specialty of his repertoire. It is unknown how much of Wright’s inspiration and technical knowledge for this finely executed chiaroscuro piece derives from any knowledge of continental precursors.
In relation to the light, it should also be noted that some critics have supposed it to emanate from, or to be amplified by, the bowl of liquid (which might be sulfurous) on the table.
Analogies in An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
This unnaturally strong light might, furthermore, represent the Light of Reason, a symbol of the Englightenment, or the light of Revelation, and to be thus a symbol of knowledge but also of God, He who holds the ultimate power to kill and resurrect living things.
In the same religious connection, the grey cockatiel has been noted as a possible evocation of the Holy Spirit, traditionally represented as a white dove.
Light, as well as the direction in which the people in the picture point us, tells us where the center of interest is to be found: on top of the maroon tripod standing on the table. The cardinal event is doubtless what is happening or is about to happen to the unfortunate bird trapped inside that glass. And yet, we may rightly wonder what is the true subject matter of Joseph Wright’s famous painting.
The figures in An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Most viewers might in fact be first drawn to a study not of the grey cockatiel inside the contraption but of the human reactions to the air pump experiment. We cannot help but see that the two young girls to the right — just like, in a different key, the young boy (their brother?) — are disturbed by the cruelty of the adult game that they have been allowed to witness.
They seem to know that the bird will be suffocated by the progressive removal of air from the flask, perhaps with the intent of being quickly revived by a sudden blow of oxygen.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump shows us the existentially deep difference that abides between the compassionate innocence of children and the self-absorbed stolidity of adults.
The man on the right, possibly the young girls’ father, is encouraging them with an earnest face to accept the unavoidable suffering of the animal, presumably because what is being done to it is interesting, useful, or educational.
Distracted by their childish emotions, they are missing out on an opportunity to learn, he might be telling them. His companion standing in the middle, the likely orchestrator of this event, is explaining his machine, so rapt in his explanation that he is in fact looking at nobody, and nobody is looking at him.
The sitting men, one to the left and the other to the right, have eyes only for the machine: one is looking somewhere about the stalk, the other at the base.
The two figures on the far left, who are in fact vaguely interacting, communicate (through their faces) peaceable interest in the proceedings, with the man appearing somewhat awed. Similarly, the young man is sitting on the left.
The meaning of An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
The true subject of the painting might therefore be human nature as it is affected by the material creations and discoveries of the Industrial and the scientific age.
It is human nature that is eminently confident in its ability to tamper with life, and only children, still uncalloused by indifference, bear the instinctive insight that what is being done is horrible.
The painting encapsulates therefore a powerful objection to the impious spirit of the Age of Enlightenment.
Interestingly, it was intended by the artist to be shown to an educated, science-loving public. It was purchased by Benjamin Bates, a social eminence and a physician.
The Vacuum Pump
The centerpiece of Joseph Wright’s composition is the vacuum pump standing upright in the middle.
Invented in 1650, the air pump was, in Wright’s time, occasionally displayed as an amusement piece. In Great Britain, it was Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, who popularised the knowledge of air pumps by experimenting with one soon after its invention and publishing the results.
As Boyle too had experimented with various small animals, the effect of airlessness on birds was no mystery by the time Wright painted his scene, a full century later.
This reinforces the impression that what we are witnessing in the Experiment is the satisfaction of curiosity not too dissimilar to that of the child who tortures insects out of boredom.
What is peculiar is that a cockatiel, a rare and expensive bird, is used in this likely fatal experiment. Its beauty and rarity may be intended to strengthen the impression of outrage and waste.
The Realism style
Joseph Wright’s scene is depicted in excellent Realist detail, most notably in the people’s clothes, the objects on the table, and the air pump itself. Along the surface of the table, we observe a pocket watch, held by the man on the left and used to estimate how long the bird will struggle.
On the opposite extreme of the table are the copper pieces known as the Magdeburg hemisphere, which can be applied to shut two sides of a bowl and show how tightly they cling when the air is sucked out.
More ominously, we see a strange greyish shape inside a bowl of semi-transparent liquid just in front of the candle. Its vague resemblance to a skull might disturb us as well as evoke an awareness of death, or vanitas.
Comparing An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump with A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery
The gloomy significance of this painting is perhaps evidenced by nothing so much as a contrast with another candlelit scene from Joseph Wright’s repertoire: A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (1768).
Contemporary to the Experiment, this highly analogous scene carries an entirely opposite emotional and coloristic charge. The light is fiery and soft, the child whose face we observe is merry, and no one else is afflicted by anything worse than thoughtfulness either. No form of life is paying the price of human curiosity, as if to suggest that astronomy is a more humane discipline than natural philosophy in its narrowest domain.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump was likely created by Wright without a commission and was then purchased by Benjamin Bates. Though the painting attracted public interest at the time and is today considered a great British artwork, it was not highly regarded during Wright’s lifetime. This is due to the artist not belonging to the gentry, to insufficient championing by critics, and to its subject matter being “common”, i.e. not religious, aristocratic, or historical.
Location of An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
More or less since its acquisition, in 1863, by the National Gallery in London, where the painting hangs today, it has been known as a masterpiece of British Realism and Joseph Wright of Derby’s most renowned painting. It is also considered one of the Masterpieces of the National Gallery.
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An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Catalogue entry, joseph wright ‘of derby’ 1734–1797 ng 725 an experiment on a bird in the air pump.
Judy Egerton , 2000
Extracted from: Judy Egerton, The British Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2000).
© The National Gallery, London
Oil on canvas , 183 × 244 cm ( 72 × 96 in .)
Inscribed Jo s . Wright Pinx t 1768 across the centre of the back of the canvas
Purchased from the artist for £200 by Dr Benjamin Bates, 1 by whom given or bequeathed to Walter Tyrrell; Edward Tyrrell, by whom offered (as ‘the property of a gentleman’ ) at Christie’s, 8 July 1854 (163), bt in; presented by Edward Tyrrell to the National Gallery 1863.
SA 1768 (193), and in its special exhibition in September 1768 in honour of the King of Denmark (131); Derby, Corporation Art Gallery, Wright of Derby Bicentenary Exhibition , 1934 (36); Derby Art Gallery and Leicester Art Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by Joseph Wright ARA , 1947 (36); Washington, National Gallery of Art, The Eye of Thomas Jefferson , 1976 (109, with detail repr. pp. 44–5); Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 1700‐tal: Tanke och form i rokokon , 1979–80 (128, detail p. 18); Tate Gallery; Paris, Grand Palais; and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wright of Derby , 1990 (21).
On long loan to Derby Art Gallery 1912–47 , and while there, transferred in 1929 to the Tate Gallery; at the Tate Gallery 1947–71 and 1972–86 (apart from three months November 1982–January 1983, when it returned to the National Gallery in exchange for the loan of NG 6196 and NG 6197 to the Richard Wilson exhibition at the Tate Gallery) .
Richard and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of British Painters , 1866, London 1947 edn, pp. 107–8 ; F.W. Shurlock, ‘The Scientific Pictures of Joseph Wright’ , Science Progress , 1923, pp. 432–8 ; Waterhouse 1953 , p. 192; Eric Robinson, ‘Joseph Wright of Derby: the Philosopher’s Painter’ , Burlington Magazine , c. 1958, p. 214 ; Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 192, pp. 43–6, 104–5, 112–14, 192, plate 58, with details figs. 47, 49; Werner Busch, Joseph Wright of Derby. Das Experiment mit der Luftpumpe. Eine Heilige Allianz zwischen Wissenschaft und Religion , Frankfurt am Main 1986 , passim ; William Schupbach, Ά Select Iconography of Animal Experiment’, in ed. Nicholas A. Rupke, Vivisection in Historical Perspective , London 1987, pp. 340–7 ; ed. Pierre‐Marc de Biasi, Gustave Flaubert: Carnets du Travail , Paris 1988, p. 350 ; Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby , exh. cat., Tate Gallery 1990, cat. no. 21, plate 21, pp. 58–61 , and see also in this exh. cat. (i) David Fraser, ‘Joseph Wright of Derby and the Lunar Society’ , pp. 19–20, and (ii) Tim Clayton, ‘A Catalogue of the Engraved Works of Wright of Derby’ , cat. no. P2, p. 153, repr.; David H. Solkin, Painting for Money , New Haven and London 1993, pp. 225–39 ; Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science , Cambridge, Mass., and London 1994 , pp. 99,102; Christopher Wright, Masters of Candlelight , Landshut 1995, pp. 114–15, detail p. 115 .
Technical Notes
Cleaned in 1974. In good condition, though the darker paint suffers slightly from a fine craquelure which exposes the light ground. Many minor alterations in the composition show through the top layer of the paint, particularly in the figures of the lecturer and his young assistant on the right, where two tassels, or possibly an epaulette, are visible on the shoulder.
Charles‐Amédée‐Philippe van Loo (1719–1795), The Magic Lantern , 1764. Oil on canvas, 88.6 × 88.6 cm. Washington, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mrs Robert W. Schuette . © 1996 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington , 1945.10.1.
Detail from An Academy by Lamplight , exhibited 1769 (oil on canvas, 127 × 101.2 cm). New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection & Fund , B1973.1.66FR .
When the Austrian traveller Count Karl von Zinzendorf visited the Society of Artists exhibition in London in the spring of 1768, he found only one picture worth noting in his journal, 29 April 1768: ‘Il y a un tableau d’une Expérience avec la machine pneumatique, qui se fait de nuit, qui est très beau.’ 2 The reviewer for the Gazetteer on 23 May was even more impressed by Wright’s Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (193 in the exhibition), writing: ‘Mr Wright, of Derby, is a very great and uncommon genius in a peculiar way. Nothing can be better understood or more freely represented, than the effect of candle‐light diffused through his great picture.’
The exhibition of The Orrery in 1766 and The Air Pump in 1768 marked Wright out as a ‘singular’ (or, in the purest sense of the Gazetteer reviewer’s word, ‘peculiar’ ) artist. These pictures fitted into none of the generally accepted categories of British art. They were too serious to be conversation pieces, and too modern to be history paintings. Their subjects were not sanctioned by literature; nor did they have the slightly saccharine charm of, for instance, Charles‐Amédée‐Philippe van Loo’s The Magic Lantern of 1764 3 ( fig. 1 ). Wright’s Orrery and Air Pump fell, rather, into the category recognised in France as le genre sérieux .
Wright did not invent the idea of ‘candle‐light diffused’ in paintings. Italian, Dutch, Netherlandish and French painters had all produced works in which candlelight, whether its [page 335] source is seen or unseen, throws chiaroscuro effects on faces, gestures, objects and fabrics. 4 Examples within the National Gallery alone include Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus , 1601 (NG 172), Gerrit van Honthorst’s Christ before the High Priest , 1617 (NG 3679), Hendrick ter Brugghen’s The Concert of about 1626 (NG 6483) and Godfried Schalken’s Candlelight Scene: A Man offering a Gold Chain and Coins to a Girl seated on a Bed , of about 1665–70 (NG 999). Nicolson has argued that Wright has strong affinities with the Utrecht School; 5 and so he has, but he can have known only those works which were engraved, 6 or which may by then have been in English collections. Wright did not go abroad until 1773, and did not travel beyond Italy. The ‘candlelight’ painter whose works he is most likely to have seen at first hand is Godfried Schalken (1643–1706), who had spent some years working in England and whose works remained popular with English collectors. 7 Some of them were much copied; Christopher Wright notes that the Boy blowing on a Firebrand (at Althorp probably by about 1700, and now in the National Gallery of Scotland) was copied around 1750 by William Shipley, 8 founder of an art school and (in 1754) of the Society of Arts, whom Wright of Derby would have known.
Detail from An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (© The National Gallery, London)
But Nicolson also observed that ‘the only contemporary candlelight painter who we can be sure influenced Wright’s genre scenes was Thomas Frye’ (adding that Frye should ‘join the Utrecht School as the chief progenitor of the mode Wright made famous’ ). 9 Thomas Frye (1710–62), 10 portraitist and co‐founder of the Bow porcelain factory, drew and himself engraved in mezzotint two series of large Heads , available in printsellers’ shops in 1760–1, which were startlingly different from the endless engraved portraits of the great, the good and the notorious produced in Britain. Frye’s Heads are not portraits, nor did they carry titles; they are studies in different aspects of contemplation, or stronger emotions such as fear, in the manner of Piazzetta. They inhabit a candlelit world, and what we see of their dress suggests an element of fantasy. Frye’s mezzotint technique dramatised their chiaroscuro effects in a manner which must have appealed powerfully to Wright. Nicolson reproduces several of them: in a telling sequence, he demonstrates Wright’s borrowings from Frye’s so‐called ‘Portrait of a Man seen in profile’ both for the figure of a young draughtsman in An Academy by Lamplight and for the figure of the young boy who peers upwards to watch the experiment in The Air Pump . In homage to Nicolson, and in the knowledge that nothing else would make his point so well, his sequence of illustrations is reproduced here ( figs. 2–4 ( a , b , c ) ).
Thomas Frye ( c. 1710–1762), Man seen in profile looking right, head inclined . Mezzotint, published 1760: image 47.5 × 35.4 cm. London, National Portrait Gallery, D11291. © National Portrait Gallery, London
During the 1760s Wright painted a series of ‘candlelight’ pictures of increasing complexity. The first is probably A Girl reading a Letter by Candlelight, with a Young Man peering over her Shoulder , of about 1760–2. The subject is not new; but Wright’s handling of the effects of light thrown upwards by candlelight on the girl’s face – and, still more interestingly, on [page 336] the more shadowy face of the man behind her – showed an ability to deploy chiaroscuro to dramatic effect which was new in British art. 11 Apart from Thomas Frye, only a few of Wright’s contemporaries showed an interest in such effects. George Romney (1734–1802) painted two small and fairly sketchy ‘candlelights’ in 1761 to include in a lottery exhibition held in Kendal to help finance his move to London, 12 but does not seem to have returned to ‘candlelights’ . Henry Morland ( c. 1719–97) painted (repetitively) slightly coquettish ‘candlelights’ of pretty girls of the lower classes, for which there were Dutch precedents; the first to be exhibited, in 1764, was A Ballad Singer , which interested Horace Walpole sufficiently for him to note ‘singing by the light of a paper candle, in a paper Lanthorn, which she holds in her right hand’ . 13 The almost unknown John Foldsone (fl. 1769–84) exhibited ‘A candlelight’ in 1769; this may have been the subject engraved in 1771 as Female Lucubration (a maidservant with a candle, who may be lighting the way to more than the bookshelf). 14 More interesting than these (but rather later) is Richard Morton Paye’s Self Portrait of the Artist engraving , exhibited in 1783, for whose rediscovery we must thank Alastair Laing. 15
Three Persons viewing the Gladiator by Candle‐light , exhibited 1765. Oil on canvas, 101.6 × 121.9 cm. Private collection. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum (photograph only) Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images
Wright was essentially a serious‐minded artist. While Morland and Foldsone used candlelight to hint at the availability of pretty girls, Wright sought ways of using candlelight to suggest the very different, studious excitement to be found in the acquisition of knowledge. There is a parallel here with Stubbs, who showed that enamel painting could be used for serious subjects, rather than (as Richard Cosway and others used it) for ‘loose and amorous’ scenes. 16 The first picture which Wright exhibited in London (in 1765, at the Society of Artists) was a ‘candlelight’ : Three Persons viewing the Gladiator by Candle‐light ( fig. 5 ), 17 in which three men study a copy of one of the most famous works of antiquity, the Borghese Gladiator . The mood is studious and reverent. But not all Wright’s candlelights were to be so solemn. Nicolson rightly calls Two Boys fighting over a Bladder ‘the most ferocious picture in Wright’s oeuvre’ , 18 while Two Girls dressing a Kitten by Candlelight depicts ‘play’ of a different kind. 19
In 1766 Wright exhibited A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun ( fig. 6 ). 20 A philosopher (a term then used of a person learned in any science) expounds the movement of the planets round the sun; the beautiful ellipses of the orrery demonstrate it. The audience is made up of seven people of different ages, levels of knowledge and sex. Lectures upon the orrery and other scientific matters became increasingly popular. Sir Richard Steele, writing in 1713, particularly praised the orrery because it ‘administers the Pleasures of Science to anyone’ . 21 The originality in Wright’s painting of the Orrery lies in his perception that a painting on a commanding scale could be made out of a scene which communicates ‘the Pleasures of Science’ to men, women and children of different levels of knowledge.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , exhibited two years later, is larger than The Orrery and, chiefly because of the compelling figure of the lecturer, rather more theatrical. The experiment was by no means new in 1768; what is new is Wright’s ability to make a painting of the impact of the experiment on ordinary people. The air pump itself, an instrument which can create a vacuum in a receiver or container by expelling all the air from it, had been invented over a century before Wright’s picture (by Otto von Guericke, at [page 337] Magdeburg in 1650). Experiments were carried out by scientists all over Europe; among them was Constantijn Huygens, ambassador and ‘philosopher’ , whose portrait by Thomas de Keyser in the National Gallery (NG 212) is justly well‐known, and who, with Nicolas Papin, contributed a paper on the distillation of spirits of the air pump to the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions in 1675. 22 The air pump was used for various experiments in pneumatic physics, to demonstrate the weight, pressure and elasticity of air. 23 It was first used for animal experiments in 1659, by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, who carried out experiments placing larks, sparrows, mice, frogs, kittens etc. in a receiver from which air was pumped out, with varying results (in many cases, death) caused by ‘impeded respiration’ . By the time Wright painted his picture, the air pump had become ‘a common item in cabinets which included instruments of experimental philosophy’ . 24 William Constable of Burton Constable in Yorkshire bought his (a ‘neat double barrell Air Pump with all ye usual apparatus’ ) from the instrument maker Benjamin Cole, Fleet Street, for £21 in 1757. 25 By the 1760s, engravings of scientific equipment had been published in dictionaries and encyclopaedias, with tiny figures or letters keyed to learned exposition. But the public at large probably encountered ‘science’ only in the form of demonstrations by travelling lecturers, 26 usually in town halls, but sometimes, as both The Orrery and The Air Pump suggest, privately, and by invitation.
One of the most solidly professional of the travelling lecturers was James Ferguson FRS, the London‐based maker of astronomical and other scientific instruments, who had lectured on ‘Popular Astronomy’ in London and the provinces since 1749. 27 In about 1760 he decided that he would do better financially to extend the range of his lectures and to organise them into courses, inviting subscribers at one guinea each per course; minimum audience not less than twenty in London, not less than thirty within ten miles of London, and not less than sixty subscribers within a hundred miles of London. 28 The courses consisted of twelve lectures on ‘the most interesting parts of Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, Electricity and Astronomy’ . 29 Ferguson travelled (presumably by wagon) with his own apparatus – at least fifty different pieces, including an air pump, an armillary sphere, an orrery and much other equipment. He gave his courses in various provincial towns – Bath, Liverpool, Newcastle among them. In 1762, on a Midlands tour, he gave them in Derby. 30
A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun , exhibited 1766. Oil on canvas, 147.3 × 203.2 cm. Derby Art Gallery. Derby Museums and Art Gallery © Derby Museums / Bridgeman Images
Charles‐Nicolas Cochin (1715–1790), Expériences d'électricité (?electrotherapy), ?1760s. Engraving, 6.1 × 10.9 cm. © The National Gallery, London
Whether Wright attended them is not known; the lectures were fairly elementary, and he had enough scientific friends among members of the Lunar Society 31 to have become familiar with ‘apparatus’ such as the orrery and the air pump and their workings. Far more novel in the 1760s were demonstrations with electricity, such as Charles‐Nicolas Cochin depicts in Expériences d’électricité ( fig. 7 ). But Wright’s purpose in painting The Air Pump was not to depict a novel experiment, but to celebrate a new appetite for learning. If he attended Ferguson’s lectures, he is likely to have been as interested in the reactions of the audience as in the content of the lectures.
The air pump was the focal point of any lecture on pneumatics. The lecturer often began by taking a pair of Magdeburg hemispheres – in Wright’s Air Pump , these are the two small linked objects lying on the table near the glass phial of murky liquid – and demonstrating that if the air between them is completely pumped out they become inseparable. Experiments with liquids might follow. But the culminating point was always a demonstration of the potentially lethal effects of depriving living creatures of air. It was possible to demonstrate this in either of two ways: by simulation, placing in the glass receiver a bladder or ‘lungs‐glass’ which could be seen to inflate with air or collapse without it, thereby feigning death; or by placing within the receiver a living creature which would sustain life (increasingly painfully) so long as some air was left in the receiver for it to breathe; the lecturer then enjoyed the god‐like power of either expelling air completely and thus killing the creature, or quickly admitting air and thus reviving it. Lecturers being what they are, most chose the more sensational demonstration on a living creature. Schupbach quotes a dialogue from Benjamin Martin’s The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Philosophy , 1755 ; 32 alas, extracts only can be given here. The young gentleman, dignified by the name of Cleonicus, is bent on demonstrating the air pump to his young and tender‐hearted sister Euphrosyne. Euphrosyne. See here comes John , with a lovely, young Rabbit. I hope that tender Creature is not to be sacrificed for my Sake. – Cleonicus. You are like all the Rest of your Sex. – You think it Cruelty to attempt the Life of a large Animal, but are quite regardless of the Destruction of those which expire under your Feet in every walk of Pleasure you take. – …But to mitigate your Concern, I shall only show, in this Experiment, that the poor Creature does really depend upon the Air for Life; and after that, I shall put it into your Hands, as well as you see it now. – Here, John, put the Rabbit under the Glass. – And now, my good Euphrosyne, have a good Heart, and look on; for turning away your Face will boot the Animal nothing. – See, upon exhausting [the receiver], how uneasy it appears. – As the air is more rarefied, the Animal is rendered more thoughtful of its unlucky Situation, and seeks in vain to extricate himself. – He leaps and jumps about. – A Vertigo seizes his brain. – He falls, and is just upon expiring. – But I turn the Ventpiece, and let in the Air by Degrees. – You see him begin to heave, and pant. – At length he rouzes up, opens his Eyes, and wildly stares about him. – I take off the receiver, and shall now deliver it as recovered from the Dead. Euphrosyne. Poor innocent creature! … Thou shalt always be my darling Rabbit, as by thee, I have been obliged to learn how necessary the Air is for animal Life, and Respiration.
Unlike Cleonicus, Ferguson believed that to experiment with a living creature in the air pump container ‘is too shocking to every spectator who has the least degree of humanity’ . 33 He preferred to simulate death by using the bladder or lungs‐ [page 339] glass, and almost certainly would have done so when lecturing on pneumatics in Derby. Ferguson no doubt gave a thoroughly sound lecture; but his use of a bladder to simulate a life at risk could hardly have inspired the high pictorial drama of Wright’s picture.
Wright’s choice of a ‘living creature’ as the subject of his Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is likely to have been at least partly inspired by the following lines in The Wanderer , a long poem by Richard Savage: So in some Engine, that denies a Vent, If unrespiring is some Creature pent, It sickens, droops, and pants, and gasps for Breath, Sad o’er the Sight swim shad’wy Mists of Death; If then kind Air pours pow’rful in again, New Heats, new Pulses quicken ev’ry Vein, From the clear’d, lifted, life‐rekindled Eye, Dispers’d, the dark and dampy Vapours fly. Richard Savage (d. 1743), 34 Dr Johnson’s early friend, had himself been reprieved from sentence of death; tried for murdering a stranger in a tavern, he was convicted and taken to the condemned cells at Newgate, but received a royal pardon. The Wanderer was first published in 1729, the year following his reprieve. 35 At some point he must, surely, have witnessed an experiment on ‘some Creature’ in an air pump, whose survival of the ordeal inspired his image of ‘life‐rekindled’ . Wright had a taste for literature, encouraged by his friend and patron, the poet William Hayley; he took several of his subjects from near‐contemporary verse, 36 as well as from Shakespeare and Milton.
In Wright’s first rough sketch for a picture of The Air Pump ( fig. 8 ), 37 the apparatus itself is at the side of the picture; the lecturer is a patient, unassertive figure and the bird he has placed in the receiver is a fairly inconspicuous common or garden songbird – a lark or a thrush – such as was normally used in this experiment. His big picture is altogether more dramatic. On the table, we see the rim of a brass candlestick. The candle it holds is the only source of light in this picture; but it is concealed from us by a large rounded glass, within which (as Schupbach noted) there appears to be a carious [page 340] human skull. 38 As Schupbach observes, ‘Skull and candle are traditional companions in iconography, the candle demonstrating the consuming passage of time, the skull its effect’ ; as emblems of mortality, they remind us that death is inevitable, and imply that the bird will die if deprived of air. 39 If this is what Wright intended, he has strangely underplayed the role of the skull, perhaps because he does not wish to distract attention from his central image. Instead of the usual hollow‐eyed, nose‐destroyed, starkly recognisable skull of traditional vanitas paintings, he shows only part of a carious (diseased) skull, seen from behind, and lacking the mandible or lower jaw. 40 His chief reason for placing it in the glass beaker may have been to add to the concealment of the candle behind it. It remained unrecognised as a skull for two centuries before Schupbach identified it.
First idea for An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , painted on the verso of Wright’s Self Portrait of c. 1767–8. Oil on canvas, 62.2 × 76.2 cm. Private collection. Image © Omnia Art Ltd
The experiment Wright depicts is evidently taking place in a private house. Probably the man next to the lecturer, pointing upwards, is the host: but who is who hardly matters compared with the fact that the audience is made up of both sexes and of people of widely differing ages. A long tradition identifies the couple on the left as Thomas Coltman and Mary Barlow, both then living in Derby and both friends of the artist; they were to marry in 1769, and sit to Wright for the double portrait Mr and Mrs Coltman (NG 6496, pp. 344–9). Flaubert saw them as lovers. He saw the Air Pump when he was in London in 1865–6, noting in his journal: ‘Wright: Expérience de la machine pneumatique. Effet de nuit. Deux amoureux dans un coin, charmants. Le vieux (à longs cheveux) qui montre l’oiseau sous le verre. Petite fille qui pleure. Charmant de naïveté et de profondeur.’ The spectators range in age from the two little girls on the right – the elder a pure ‘Euphrosyne’ , whose (?) father may well be saying to her ‘Have a good Heart, and look on; for turning away your Face will boot the Animal nothing’ . The oldest is the man seated on the right, not watching the experiment but seemingly sunk in thought. This figure is closely derived, as Michael Wynne has shown, 41 from a pastel drawing by Frye of An Old Man leaning on a Staff , of about 1760; but Wright has lowered the man’s head, so that his gaze seems to centre on the candle and the skull, as if brooding on their implications.
The most detached spectator is the man partly turned away from us, holding a stop‐watch with which to time the convulsions of the ‘subject’ . The only person present who watches the experiment with genuine curiosity is the boy next to him, leaning forwards, and, as Kate Atkinson recently observed, ‘craning his neck to see better, utterly absorbed by his observation’ (see fig. 3 ). 42
Within the glass receiver, Wright depicts a white cockatoo, a rare bird in the Midlands in the 1760s, and one whose life would never in reality have been risked in an experiment such as this: 43 but Wright had already painted a white cockatoo in his portrait of Mr and Mrs William Chase , 44 and knew that its white plumage was just what he needed to show to dramatic advantage in the shadows of this room. As for the lecturer, Wright has transformed him into a magus with a sense of theatre, and placed him so that candlelight heightens the effect of every furrow of his brow and every curl of his silver locks. Busch 1986 sees precedents in an early Netherlandish type of painting of the Holy Trinity – where God the Father points upwards towards the dove of the Holy Spirit, while Christ extends a hand towards the people – in Wright’s central group of the lecturer, the bird and the man pointing upwards. 45
The lecturer’s magnetic expression illustrates only the most obvious of the effects which Wright achieved in this, the most ambitious of all his ‘candlelights’ . Illumined faces seen in close‐up, angled necks such as Mary Barlow’s in her softly dark, sinuously stranded jet necklace, profiles such as the young boy’s half‐hidden in shadow, these are only part of those effects. Just as interesting to Wright is what happens to colours as they recede from light. The lecturer’s showy robe – flashier than any other demonstrator wears in his scenes – can be seen immediately above the light to be of light red damask, woven with arabesques; as the eye travels upwards, further from the light, the stuff darkens to magenta. This observation of changes in colour as light recedes continues throughout the picture. One other example may be given: the young ‘Euphrosyne’ who averts her eyes from the experiment wears, like her sister, a dress of palest lilac. In the light of the candle, these dresses are pale indeed; but as the elder girl turns away from the experiment, her dress deepens from lilac to purple, and finally to black. This, perhaps, is what the Gazetteer meant when praising the effects of light ‘diffused throughout his great picture’ .
Wright depicts the moment when much of the air has already been pumped out of the glass container, by means of the handle attached to the barrels encasing pistons. The bird gasps, and sinks to the bottom of the cage; but it is not yet lifeless. The lecturer’s left hand is poised on the stop‐cock at the top of the receiver; if he turns it in time, the bird will revive; if not, it will die. The lecturer seems to stare out at us as if he had god‐like power of determining life or death; but he will almost certainly have conducted this experiment before, may wish to be invited again (for a fee), knows that actual death distresses a family group like this, and is probably counting under his breath each second of risk he can take before reviving the bird.
Wright’s painting leaves us uncertain of the outcome. A boy by the window holds the cords of a birdcage, waiting for his cue; is he to lower the cage to receive the revived bird, or haul it out of sight because the bird is dead? We cannot be certain: but it should be noted that when Valentine Green engraved his mezzotint of the subject, he indicated – with a few strokes of the graver, and presumably with Wright’s sanction – a just perceptible return of air into the receiver.
Much of the power of Wright’s painting was retained in the mezzotint engraved by Valentine Green. As Tim Clayton 1990 notes, this was based on Green’s own faithful drawing, presumably made soon after the painting’s completion. The mezzotint was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1769 [page [341]] [page 342] (271); the plate was promptly purchased by John Boydell, who published it for sale at fifteen shillings. Good impressions were in demand, both in Britain and on the Continent. Increasingly weak impressions continued to be printed throughout the nineteenth century. 46
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , detail (© The National Gallery, London)
In the Paris Salon of 1771, Charles‐Amédée‐Philippe van Loo (1719–95) exhibited Une Expérience physique d’un oiseau privé d’air à la machine pneumatique , 47 but this has little in common with Wright’s picture; the figures are dressed in the style of the previous century, suggesting that this was in effect a history painting, depicting the air pump while it was still a recent invention, and the vaguely aristocratic characters register distinct ennui: Diderot commented ‘Expérience où aucun des spectateurs n’est à ce qu’il fait.’ 48 A decade later, probably in the early 1780s, Amédée van Loo returned to the subject, but this time very differently. He painted his own family gathered together to watch an experiment with the air pump ( fig. 10 ), 49 with himself in the role of lecturer, Mme van Loo rather nervously clutching a pet dog (but she need not be so apprehensive, for there seems already to be some small creature in the receiver), a boy cranking the apparatus and various members of the family looking on, mostly rather urbanely. It seems likely that Amédée van Loo had seen the mezzotint after Wright’s Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , and that he adapted Wright’s idea of integrating the subject into a domestic setting.
Wright’s own image of the bird imprisoned in the glass receiver may in a sense have haunted his thoughts. After the gravely beautiful An Academy by Lamplight , exhibited the following year, 50 he painted no more ‘candlelights’ , instead painting a series of ‘night pieces’ , 1771–3, foreshadowed by the glimpse of a full moon riding above clouds in The Air Pump . But at the same time, he was preoccupied with subjects of captives and prisoners. He showed A Captive King (now lost) at the Society of Artists in 1773. 51 Then he painted The Captive, from Sterne’s Sentimental Journey , completing one version in Rome in 1774 and another which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778; 52 he also painted several small prison scenes. These pictures were largely inspired by Sterne’s ‘picture’ of a man confined in a dungeon; but it may be recalled that the key passage in Sterne describes Yorick having lost his passport in Paris, joking to himself about being ‘clapp’d up into the Bastile’ . Then he walks into the street, where he hears ‘a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained “it could not get out” ’ . He saw it was ‘a starling hung in a little cage – “I can’t get out” – “I can’t get out” , said the starling’ . Thereafter Yorick could think of nothing but ‘the miseries of confinement’ .
Charles‐Amédée‐Philippe van Loo (1719–1795), Self Portrait as Philosopher, performing an Experiment with the Air Pump before his Wife and Family , c. 1780. Oil on canvas. Archangel’skoe Museum. Archangel’skoe Museum, Russia © The National Gallery, London
1. See Wright’s Account Book (coll. Derby Art Gallery): the picture is twice listed, under ‘Candlelight pictures’ , p. 35, as ‘The Air Pump – 210’ and again, under the same heading but now paid for, as ‘The Air Pump Pd 200’ ; elsewhere in the Account Book is a note that Dr Bates paid for it in instalments. Dr Benjamin Bates, physician, of Little Missenden, Bucks, and friend of Dr Erasmus Darwin, had already bought Wright’s Three Persons viewing the Gladiator in 1765, for £40 (he also bought Wright’s ‘Galen’ , a picture about which nothing is now known: see Nicolson 1968 , p. 236). Bates was also the patron of John Hamilton Mortimer and Thomas Jones, see John Sunderland, ‘John Hamilton Mortimer: His Life and Works’ , Walpole Society 1986 , vol. LII, 1988, under cat. no. 85: The Progress of Vice , four paintings of 1774 painted for Dr Bates, of which two survive; and ed. A.P. Oppé, ‘Memoirs of Thomas Jones’ , Walpole Society 1946–48 , XXXII, 1951, pp. 33–5, 38 . ( Back to text .)
2. Quoted by Robinson 1958 , p. 214. ( Back to text .)
3. Coll. NGA , Washington (880), with a companion picture, Soap Bubbles (881). ( Back to text .)
4. See in particular Benedict Nicolson, ‘Artificial Light in Painting in the 17th Century’ , text of a lecture given in the 1970s, published in ed. L. Vertova, Caravaggism in Europe , Turin 1979 , vol. I, pp. 258. See also Wright 1995 , passim , including 75 ills, in colour. ( Back to text .)
5. Nicolson 1968 , pp. 39–40; and see p. 47: ‘When we come to discuss Wright’s genre scenes, it will be to Honthorst and Terbrugghen to whom we shall most often refer.’ ( Back to text .)
6. The Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus was engraved by Pierre Fatoure in 1629. The Honthorst (NG 3679) was engraved by Pietro Fontana (1762–1837), i.e. too late to have influenced Wright’s candlelights. No engraving of the Schalken (NG 999) is recorded in MacLaren/Brown 1991. ( Back to text .)
7. See Andrew W. Moore, Dutch and Flemish Painting in Norfolk , exh. cat., Norfolk Museums Service 1988 , p. 8, noting particularly two versions of Schalken’s Boy blowing on a Firebrand ( ‘The Boy blowing the Coal’ ) in English collections by the mid-eighteenth century: ( 1 i ) recorded at Althorp, in 1746 ( Kenneth Garlick, ‘A Catalogue of Pictures at Althorp’ , Walpole Society 1974–1976 , XLV, 1976, p. 76 , cat. no. 585): now coll. NGS ; (ii) in the collection of Henry Bell at King’s Lynn. Moore also notes (p. 26) three small candlelights by Schalken in the collection of the dealer and collector Matthew Boulter of Yarmouth by 1778. ( Back to text .)
8. Wright 1995 , p. 133, under no. 68. ( Back to text .)
9. Nicolson 1968 , p. 48. For his discussion of Frye as an influence on Wright, see pp. 42–4, 46, 48–9. ( Back to text .)
10. See Michael Wynne, ‘Thomas Frye (1710–1762)’ , Burlington Magazine , CXIV, 1972, pp. 79–84 , figs. 13–31. ( Back to text .)
11. See A Girl reading a Letter by Candlelight, with a Young Man peering over her Shoulder, c. 1760–2, coll. Col. R.S. Nelthorpe; Nicolson 1968, cat. no. 207, plate 45; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 14, repr. in colour. See also A Girl reading a Letter, with an Old Man reading over her Shoulder , ? exh. SA 1767 or 1768 : Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 205, plate 77: Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 15, repr. in colour. ( Back to text .)
12. See Mary Bennett, ‘Boy with a Candle’ , Burlington Magazine , CXIX, 1977, p. 857 . Another picture by Romney of a boy (probably also his brother James) with a candle was formerly with Sidney Sabin. ( Back to text .)
13. Exh. SA 1764 (73). Walpole’s catalogue annotation is quoted by Graves 1907 , p. 175. There are many versions, including one in the Tate Gallery (N 05471), whose collection also includes A Lady’s Maid soaping Linen and A Laundry Maid Ironing . ( Back to text .)
14. For Foldsone, see Waterhouse 1981, p. 128. ( Back to text .)
15. Coll. National Trust (Upton House): exh. SA 1783 (203). See Laing 1995 , p. 70, repr. p. 71 in colour. ( Back to text .)
16. Ozias Humphry, MS ‘Particulars of the Life of Mr Stubbs’ , coll. Liverpool City Libraries . ( Back to text .)
17. Exh. SA 1765 (163). Private collection; Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 188, plate 52; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 22, repr. in colour. ( Back to text .)
18. Nicolson 1968 , p. 50. Private collection; Nicolson 1968 , cat , . no. 206, plate 76; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 16, repr. in colour. ( Back to text .)
19. Coll. Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London; Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 212, plate 75; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 17, repr. in colour. This subject is derived from an engraving by Charles‐Nicolas Cochin of 1740. ( Back to text .)
20. Coll. Derby Art Gallery; Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 190, plate 54, with details figs. 37–8; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 18, repr. in colour; and see David Fraser in Egerton 1990 , pp. 16–17. ( Back to text .)
21. Quoted by Francis Maddison, ‘An Eighteenth Century Orrery by Thomas Heath and some earlier orreries’ , Connoisseur , CXLI, 1958, pp. 163–4 . ( Back to text .)
22. Published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Abridged , vol. II, 1672–83, London 1809, pp. 239–40 . ( Back to text .)
23. See Schupbach 1987, p. 341. ( Back to text .)
24. Schupbach 1987, p. 341. ( Back to text .)
25. See William Constable as Patron 1721–1791 , exh. cat., Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston‐upon‐Hull 1970 ; both the air pump supplied by Cole and his receipt for William Constable’s payment were exhibited (cat. nos. 128–9). ( Back to text .)
26. Among these, Schupbach 1987 lists John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744), Benjamin Worster ( fl. 1719–30), Benjamin Martin (1704/5–76) and Adam Walker (?1731–1821), as well as James Ferguson (1710–76). ( Back to text .)
27. See E. Henderson, Life of James Ferguson, F.R.S., Edinburgh, London and Glasgow 1867 , p. 133. See also John R. Millburn, Wheelwright of the Heavens: The Life and Work of James Ferguson, F.R.S., London 1988 . ( Back to text .)
28. Ferguson, Tracts and Tables , first published 1767 , with lists of apparatus to be used in the lectures, in Henderson 1867 , pp. 343–8. ( Back to text .)
29. This is the syllabus as published in 1769; see Henderson 1867 , p. 355. ( Back to text .)
30. Henderson 1867 , p. 268. Henderson records that in the Midlands Ferguson gave ‘his usual course of lectures on Astronomy, Mechanics, Hydraulcs. &c .’ ; but almost certainly it would have included the customary lecture on pneumatics (including the air pump). Ferguson repeated his course of lectures in Derby in 1771. ( Back to text .)
31. For the Lunar Society, established in Birmingham around 1764–5, see Robert F. Scholfield E. Schofield , The Lunar Society of Birmingham , Oxford 1963 ; a short account is given by Fraser (in Egerton 1990 ), p. 15. Its members were Midlands scientists, manufacturers, doctors, etc. Wright was not himself a member of the Lunar Society; his closest contacts with that Society were through his friend and near neighbour in Derby, John Whitehurst FRS (1713–88), maker of clocks, barometers and other instruments, and Dr Erasmus Darwin, who moved from Lichfield to Derby in 1783. For Wright’s portraits of Darwin and Whitehurst, see Egerton 1990, cat. nos. 144–5, 147. ( Back to text .)
32. Quoted by Schupbach 1987, pp. 342–3, from Martin 1755 , vol. I, pp. 398–9. ( Back to text .)
33. James Ferguson, Lectures on Select Subjects , London 1760 , p. 200; quoted by Nicolson 1968 , p. 114. ( Back to text .)
34. For Richard Savage, see Richard Holmes, Dr Johnson and Mr Savage , London 1993 , passim . The quotation is taken from ed. Clarence Tracy, The Poetical Works of Richard Savage , Cambridge 1962 , p. 128. ( Back to text .)
35. See ed. Tracy 1962 , pp. 94–5. The Wanderer was begun in 1726–7. In December 1727 Savage was tried for murder, and condemned to death; he was pardoned in January 1728, and completed the greater part of The Wanderer later that year. ( Back to text .)
36. For instance, Edwin, from Dr Beattie’s Minstrel (Nicolson 1968, cat. no. 235); The Dead Soldier (Nicolson 1968, cat. nos 238–40), taken from John Langhorne’s The Country Justice (and various scenes from Sterne). ( Back to text .)
37. Private collection. Painted c. 1767 on the reverse of a Self Portrait , 62.2 × 76.2 cm, turned sideways. Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 193, plate 59. ( Back to text .)
38. Schupbach 1987, p. 346. ( Back to text .)
39. Schupbach 1987, p. 346. ( Back to text .)
40. In correspondence with the compiler 1988–90, Schupbach observes that the skull is lacking part of the jaw. ( Back to text .)
41. See Michael Wynne, ‘A Pastel by Thomas Frye’ , British Museum Yearbook II: Collectors and Collections , London 1977, pp. 242–4 , fig. 204; also repr. Egerton 1990 , p. 61, fig. 10. The drawing appears to have belonged to the Tate family of Liverpool, perhaps to Thomas Moss Tate, Wright’s pupil; thus it was probably easily accessible to Wright. ( Back to text .)
42. Kate Atkinson, ‘Author’s Picture Choice’, in NG News , June 1997 [pp. 1–2] . ( Back to text .)
43. Schupbach 1987, p. 347. ( Back to text .)
44. Private collection, New York; c. 1762–3, Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 13, repr. in colour. ( Back to text .)
45. Busch 1986 , pp. 26–49. ( Back to text .)
46. See Clayton 1990 , p. 235. ( Back to text .)
47. Repr. Diderot: Salons , ed. Jean Seznec, Oxford 1967 , vol. IV, fig. 81, as ‘ancienne collection Youssoupoff’ (USSR). The compiler is indebted to her colleague Humphrey Wine for drawing this picture to her attention. ( Back to text .)
48. Diderot: Salons , p. 175. ( Back to text .)
49. The painting is reproduced here from a reproduction in Charles Oulmont, ‘Amédée van Loo’ , Gazette des Beaux‐Arts , 1912 , 2 parts, Pt ii, p. 149. ( Back to text .)
50. Coll. Yale Center for British Art; exh. SA 1769 (197), Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 189, plate 60; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 23, repr. in colour. ( Back to text .)
51. Exh. SA 1773 (370). Walpole thought the figure ‘bad and inexpressive’ , and noted that he had ‘a lanthorn hanging over him’ . Nicolson 1968 (cat. no. 214, as untraced) thinks this captive was probably the crusader Guy de Luignan. ( Back to text .)
52. The Captive , 1774, is coll. Vancouver Art Gallery; Egerton 1990 , cat. no. 53, repr. in colour. The Captive , exh. RA 1778 (360), is coll. Derby Art Gallery ( Nicolson 1968 , cat. no. 217, plate 162). ( Back to text .)
Abbreviations
List of archive references cited.
- Liverpool , Liverpool City Libraries, Picton Collection : Ozias Humphry , Particulars of the Life of Mr Stubbs… given to the author … by himself and committed from his own relation , MS, c.1790–7
List of references cited
List of exhibitions cited, arrangement of the catalogue.
This is a catalogue of the 61 works which represent the British School in the National Gallery now, at the beginning of 1998. The first Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, with Critical Remarks on their Merits , by W. Young Ottley, was published in 1832 (earlier catalogues were hardly more than hand‐lists). The first scholarly catalogue devoted to the Gallery’s British pictures – National Gallery Catalogues: The British School – was compiled by Martin Davies (Director 1968–73). Its first edition in 1946 included 333 pictures. By 1959 , when Davies published a revised edition (following large transfers of pictures upon the Tate’s separation in 1954 from the National Gallery in 1954), the number of British pictures in the National Gallery had been reduced to 99.
Martin Davies’s British School catalogue still stands as a model of concise record and meticulous (sometimes astringent) footnotes. This catalogue is chattier. I have tried to combine accurate information about the making and subsequent history of the pictures with more concern for their subject matter than Martin Davies allowed himself. Here I share to the full Neil MacGregor’s conviction that the public should have as much information as possible about their pictures. In a collection still dominated by portraits, much information about sitters (men, women and, in the largest portrait of all, a horse) is available; some of it may help to assess how far a portraitist has succeeded in reflecting [page 17] individual character. The background information offered here can, of course, be skipped, leaving the illustrations – or better still, the actual works – to speak for themselves.
All the works have been examined in the company of Martin Wyld, the Gallery’s Chief Restorer. He has compiled all the Technical Notes except for those on Hogarth’s Marriage A‐la‐Mode , which have been contributed by David Bomford. Many of these Technical Notes incorporate the results of detailed examination by Ashok Roy, Head of the Scientific Department, and by his colleagues Raymond White and Jennie Pilc. The bibliography of published work on the techniques and pigments used by artists during the period covered by this catalogue ( pp. 432–5 ) has been compiled by Jo Kirby of the Gallery’s Scientific Department.
The catalogue is arranged in the two parts into which it fairly naturally falls. Part I catalogues the well‐known and deservedly popular works which are nearly always on view (except when lent to outside exhibitions). The artists represented in it are Constable, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Thomas Jones, Lawrence, Reynolds, Sargent, Stubbs, Turner, Wilson, Wright of Derby and Zoffany, arranged in alphabetical order, with their works (when more than one) in their known (or likely) chronological sequence. The time‐span of works by this small group of twelve artists is hardly more than 150 years, from Hogarth’s six paintings of Marriage A‐la‐Mode , of about 1742, to Sargent’s Lord Ribblesdale , dated 1902. In this part of the catalogue, movements of pictures to and from the Tate are briefly noted (below the heading Exhibited), such information being offered to reassure those who remember seeing, say, Wright of Derby’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump in the Tate rather than in the National Gallery (or recalling locations given in past literature) that their recollection was not at fault. Under this heading, movements for short periods usually indicate loans supplied by the Tate to fill gaps on the National Gallery walls when it lent pictures for exhibition elsewhere. ‘Tate 1960–1’, frequently noted, indicates the period of the Gallery’s winter exhibition National Gallery Acquisitions 1953–62 ; to make room for this exhibition, most of its British School pictures were accommodated and displayed in the Tate Gallery.
Part II catalogues the Gallery’s collection of portraits (including four marble busts) of those who played significant parts in the history of the National Gallery itself. Since it is in a sense a narrative (though an incomplete one) of the Gallery’s history, Part II is presented chronologically, according to the various sitters’ relationships to the National Gallery. Lawrence is the only artist to appear in both parts of this catalogue (his portrait of * Queen Charlotte appears in Part I , his two portraits of * John Julius Angerstein in Part II ). In this group, Sir George Beaumont (grudgingly sitting to Hoppner, an artist he habitually denigrated) will be a familiar figure in the history of British art. Other Trustees and benefactors – preeminently, perhaps, Layard of Nineveh – will be better known outside the perspectives of the National Gallery, while two of its minor heroes – William Seguier, the Gallery’s first Keeper, and William Boxall RA , its second Director – may hardly be known at all.
Few portraits of National Gallery benefactors were ever transferred to the Tate; the only exceptions appear to be the transfer of the first version of Linnell’s portrait of Samuel Rogers (the National Gallery retaining a second version) and the transfer in 1949 of Hoppner’s portrait of Charles Long, Lord Farnborough , accepted by the National Gallery as a gift in 1934, but hung for a few months only, before being pronounced by Sir Kenneth Clark (Director, 1933–45) ‘not worth a place’. The National Gallery retains a finer image of Long in the form of Chantrey’s marble bust. Most of the works in Part II are hung in the Reception Area or the Reserve Collection.
All but one of the benefactors who figure in Part II have one thing in common: they bought pictures, but begat no heirs, and therefore chose to give or bequeath paintings to the National Gallery. The exception is the actor‐manager Thomas Denison Lewis, who in 1849 bequeathed not only * Mr Lewis as The Marquis in the Midnight Hour (Shee’s portrait of his famous actor‐father), but also £10,000 for future Gallery purchases. Prudently invested, the Lewis Fund enabled the purchase of many National Gallery pictures of all schools, including two much‐loved British pictures: the Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants and Gainsborough’s * Cornard Wood . The Hogarth was transferred to the Tate in 1960: thus, unknowingly, Lewis became a benefactor to both institutions.
Ann An Appendix includes provisional catalogue entries for * Portrait of a Lady , painted by Cornelius Johnson (or Jonson van Ceulen) after his return to Holland, and * On the Delaware , by the wholly American painter George Inness. Both were included in Martin Davies’s British School catalogue, but since they do not properly belong to the British School, they will eventually be included in more appropriate Schools catalogues.
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Science and the Sublime: A Masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby
One of the great masterpieces from the Age of Enlightenment, Joseph Wright of Derby's monumental An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) depicts a small group of people gathered around a candlelit table on which a lecturer in natural history is performing a scientific experiment, namely the creation of a vacuum, as described by chemist Robert Boyle in the 17th century. As air is slowly removed from a glass jar, the fate of a cockatiel inside the jar hangs in the balance. The observers' reactions range from fascination to dismay. In Wright's hands, the tableau is an exercise in the sublime, a moment of extreme tension recast as a dramatic meditation on the fragility of life. At the same time, the experiment being performed relates to advances in the fields of science and medicine, making the scene a celebration of human achievement.
"Science and the Sublime: A Masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby" presents the powerful 6-by-8-foot painting on loan from the National Gallery in London, where it is one of that institution's most popular paintings, along with 15 works from The Huntington's own collections, including two smaller paintings by Wright and 13 rare objects from the Library's holdings. The exhibition's theme highlights two major strengths of The Huntington's collections—British art and the history of science—providing a unique opportunity to juxtapose materials that are not normally displayed together. Alongside Bird in the Air Pump , are rare books and ephemera that reveal the real science behind the elements that Wright depicts on canvas, as well as the contemporary moral and aesthetic debates with which he engages.
The loan of Bird in the Air Pump is part of a reciprocal exchange with the National Gallery, where The Huntington's most famous work, Thomas Gainsborough's iconic painting of The Blue Boy (ca. 1770), will be on display for London museumgoers for the first time in a century, from Jan. 25 through May 15, 2022.
Related Events
Drawing Closer: Family Drop-in Program Sat., April 2, 2022 | 11 a.m.–2 p.m. | Huntington Art Gallery Loggia Free with general admission
Kids can get up close and personal with Joseph Wright of Derby's monumental painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, in the exhibition Science and the Sublime in this family drop-in art program. Meet teaching artist Michelle Ohm and role play the emotions found in the painting. Then create your own "discovery" drawings of birds and scientific objects found in the painting on acetate and reveal them to your friends and family. More
It's In the Air: Family Drop-in Program Sat., April 30, 2022 | 11 a.m.–2 p.m. | Huntington Art Gallery Loggia Free with general admission
Get up close and personal with Joseph Wright of Derby's monumental painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, in the exhibition Science and the Sublime in this family drop-in art program and learn the science behind the artwork with superstar scientist and STEAM educator, Pablo Aguirre. Learn about the importance of oxygen, how an air pump works, and why air is important to living things with a series of interactive experiments that are fun for the whole family. More
Drawing from the Gallery: Science and the Sublime Thu., March 31, 2022 | 5 p.m.–7:30 p.m. | Huntington Art Gallery Members: $30 | Public: $35
We invite you for a closer look at an all-new program that inspires curiosity, conversation, and creativity. This program begins with an in-gallery talk and overview of the exhibit "Science and the Sublime" by curator of British Art, Melinda McCurdy, and concludes with a guided sketching session in the galleries with artist instructor Richard Scott. All supplies and materials will be provided. Tickets
Night at the Salon: Science and the Sublime Fri., April 15, 2022 | 6 p.m.–9 p.m. | The Huntington Members: $35 | Public: $45
Explore the exhibition "Science and the Sublime: A Masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby" through salon-style offerings in this new evening series including in-gallery curator conversations, scientific exploration, outdoor sketching, live music, and a curated bar. (Wine, beer and cocktails available for purchase.) Tickets
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Joseph Wright of Derby: Painting the Industrial Revolution
Anastasia Manioudaki 11 December 2020 min Read
Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment with a Bird in an Air Pump, 1768, National Gallery, London, England, UK. Detail.
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Enlightenment and Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’
Joseph Wright of Derby is deemed as the first painter to capture the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. His paintings portray the zeitgeist of his time during the Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a shift in philosophical thinking, turning on a scientific approach instead of the traditional religious view of the world. Wright of Derby spent most of his life in his hometown. The geographical identifier ‘of Derby’ was used to distinguish him from another artist of the same name.
Britain is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. From the second half of the 18 th century, rural, agricultural societies transformed into urban and industrialized ones. It was made possible with the extensive use of steam powered engines , firstly in the textile industry and then elsewhere. Science was the word of the day and artists were mesmerized by the new world that was emerging.
An Experiment with a Bird in an Air Pump
A gruesome experiment is taking place on the canvas: a natural philosopher, a forerunner of what today we call a scientist, is demonstrating Robert Boyle’s air pump. The device sucks out the air from the glass bowl on the top where the cockatoo is slowly getting asphyxiated. Today such an experiment would be unthinkable. However, Wright of Derby leaves the fate of the bird ambiguous. The hand of the natural philosopher is placed on top of the glass jar. What is he doing? Is he waiting until the last moment to open the jar and save the bird or is he making sure that the jar is airtight, sealing the fate of the bird?
Around the philosopher, the onlookers react in various ways. First, we notice the two little girls. They are practically horrified. The older one shields her eyes while the younger one tugs at her sister’s dress for comfort. The father does not seem to share their sentiment. On the contrary, he instructs his older daughter to look at the experiment. To the right of the philosopher, we see a young couple. They plainly do not care about the experiment at all. They are too busy with each other. Next to them a little boy and a man are fascinated with the science involved. Lastly, an older man next to the girls sits in deep thought. He ruminates on the philosophical repercussions of the experiment. Through science man had at last tamed nature. A new world was dawning, but where would this lead humankind?
Derby during Wright’s time was a center of the Industrial Revolution. The painter was close with members of the Lunar Society, which was a group of entrepreneurs who met and discussed about how the new-found science could be used in practice in the factories. One of them was Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, and probably the model for the thinking man in the painting. Another was John Whitehurst, the model for the natural philosopher conducting the experiment. The Lunar society is referenced by the full moon outside the window as well.
A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery
A group of people gather, fascinated around another marvel of their time, listening to the grey-haired lecturer. The gold device in the center is an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. When in motion, each planet and its moons rotate according to their orbit around the sun in the center, which is represented by an oil lamp. The model used by Wright of Derby has large metal rings to simulate eclipses.
Once again, the ideals of the Enlightenment come forth, most prominently in the man taking notes, next to the lecturer. Man has come to a point where he begins to understand not only the natural world, as in An Experiment with a Bird in an Air Pump , but the cosmos as well.
Wright of Derby gave his purely scientific subjects the same treatment reserved only for historical paintings, that is subjects taken from mythology and the Bible. According to the French Academy of Art and later the British one as well, history painting was the highest, most important genre. In short, Wright of Derby depicted scientists and common people the way gods were presented. In his paintings, scientific thought is the moral he champions. To structure his composition, Wright of Derby looks to the popular at the time ‘ conversation piece’ , an informal group portrait showing families or friends interacting with each other. In addition, he imbued his painting with stark interchanges of light and shadow, reminiscent of the works of Caravaggio , to create the dramatic atmosphere.
The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus
Apart from the mechanical wonders of his day, Wright of Derby was interested in chemistry as well, and its predecessor, alchemy. Traditionally, alchemists were trying to create the philosopher’s stone, a substance that could turn ordinary metals to gold or silver, also being a step forward in achieving immortality. However, even if this substance remains elusive, alchemists made some interesting discoveries as a byproduct.
On the canvas we see Henning Brand , an alchemist from Hamburg, discovering phosphorus in 1669. In front of him, in a flask, phosphorus is illuminating the gothic study. The alchemist stares in wonder while praying for the successful conclusion of his operation. Behind him his two assistants, amazed, point towards the glowing flask. The painter uses religious imagery to convey the solemnity of the scientific breakthrough. The alchemist reminds us a saint or a prophet receiving a vision.
While the painting is known as The Alchemist discovering Phosphorus Wright’s original title is The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone , discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers.
- Industrial revolution
- Joseph Wright of Derby
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Anastasia Manioudaki
Art Historian, she graduated from the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Athens and has an MA in Art History from the University of Sussex. She is a member of the Association of Greek Art Historians. Her articles have been published in Ta Nea tis Technis and avopolis.gr.
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