Joseph Wright of Derby

Name
Joseph Wright of Derby
Date of birth
03 Sep 1734
Place of birth
Derbyshire (county)/England
Date of death
29 Aug 1797
Place of death
Derbyshire (county)/England
Gender
Male
Biography
Born in Derby on 3 September 1734, Joseph Wright was the third son of lawyer, John Wright and Hannah Brookes. He trained as a portrait and landscape painter under Thomas Hudson (1701–79) between 1751 and 1753 and again between 1756 and 1757. In the 1760s, Wright settled in Derby from which base he toured the East Midlands as a portrait painter in 1769. Wright’s fame was spreading in this decade on account of his ‘candlelight’ pictures, which made dramatic use of strong lighting contrasts and in some cases featured scenes of contemporary science and industry. Wright spent a short spell in Liverpool (from 1768 to 1771) and nearly two years in Rome (from 1773 to 1775), where he toured the main cities and sights and painted locations associated with classical antiquity. Although he shifted towards literary and landscape subjects, upon return he went to Bath in 1775, in hopes of replacing Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) as a society portrait painter, following Gainsborough’s relocation to London in the previous year. The failure of this experiment led Wright to return to Derby in 1777, where he had extensive familial and social networks and a steady source of portrait work. Plagued for years by poor health, he died there in 1797, aged 62.