JOSEPH WRIGHT of DERBY (1734 – 1797)
Portrait of a Lady
Oil on canvas
Height: 50 inches (127cm)
Width: 40 inches (102 cm)
Provenance: By direct descent through the Arkwright family
As a painter, Joseph Wright reached an astonishingly early artistic maturity. Some of his greatest and most original works, including those depicting scientific experiments, were executed shortly after he set up on his own in the late 1750s. Born in Derby, he was the son of an attorney, but it is not known what decided Joseph to become an artist. By sixteen he went to London to train in the studio of London’s then most fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson (who had previously taught Joshua Reynolds) 1751-53, and he returned for a second spell 1756-57. On his return to Derby he began his own career, taking portrait commissions from the landed gentry around Derby and the Midlands. He was soon liberated from the stylistic stamp of his teacher Hudson, refusing to idealise the features of his sitters, and instead exploiting the visually seductive effects of light playing on drapery. The latent realism of his early portraits was to mature into the powerful directness of his portraits of industrialists like Sir Richard Arkwright, and his close friend Erasmus Darwin. The income from portraits allowed him to paint uncommissioned works like the scientific subjects, scenes of work and industry, and later his landscapes which experimented in the use of unusual lighting effects. His “candlelit” paintings of the 1760’s made him famous, and mezzotint reproductions of his works sold extremely well, and although still based in Derby he exhibited often in the London galleries. In 1773 he went to Italy, visiting Rome and Naples, where he witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius which had a profound effect on his later landscape painting. He was from this time influenced by Vernet’s pictures which further emboldened him to explore the possibilities of experimentation with lighting in the subject of landscape. Returning to England in 1775 he spent a short time in Bath before returning to Derby where he remained for the rest of his life. He was the first successful British artist to eschew the capital city and prefer a life in the provinces, but his decision seems not to have adversely affected his career as he was elected ARA in 1781, and then RA in 1784, but he declined the honour and later held the RA in considerable suspicion. Patrons continuously sought his work, especially from industry, and they included Josiah Wedgwood and Jedediah Strutt. Wright was one of the most original and talented artists of his generation and his work has been appreciated continuously since its creation, he died after a period of ill health in his beloved Derbyshire in 1797.
The lady in this portrait is effectively depicted in fancy dress. Her costume, jewels and feathers are derived from Peter Paul Rubens’ famous portrait of his second wife, Helena Fourment, of the 1630s, at one time in the collection of Catherine the Great of Russia, and now in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon. It became fashionable for English ladies to adopt fancy, or historical dress for the Masquerades, or Masquerade Balls, which had become very popular with 18th Century Society. This practice provided participants with a forum to re-establish and transcend their own identities, and created an unreal effect on observers, causing Horace Walpole to comment in 1742 after seeing a masquerade given by the Duchess of Norfolk: ‘quantities of pretty Vandykes, and all kinds of old pictures walked out of their frames’, and it is believed that Mary, Duchess of Ancaster wore this particular costume to a Masque at Ranelagh. She was subsequently painted by Thomas Hudson (Wright’s teacher) wearing the costume (a portrait so popular that it was engraved by James MacArdell and published in 1757), and thenceforward a number of society ladies requested that they be depicted in the same manner, and this portrait is one of their number (another of Lady Oxenden is in the Collection of the Art gallery of New South Wales). Never previously exhibited publicly, this portrait is a recent and exciting discovery.
Literature: Aileen Ribeiro, “The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England, 1730 to 1790, and its Relation to Fancy Dress in Portraiture”, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 1975
We are grateful to Paul Cox, of the National Portrait Gallery, for his assistance with the cataloguing of this painting.