Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97), famous for his candlelight paintings such as A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in Place of the Sun (1766, Derby Museums and Art Gallery) and An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768, National Gallery, London), had an established portrait painting practice in and around Derby and later in Liverpool before visiting Italy in 1773-75. It is perhaps less well known that upon his return to Britain he spent about eighteen months in Bath with the hope of setting himself up as a fashionable portrait painter there. The Holburne Museum in Bath provides a fitting venue for this welcome exploration of an overlooked episode in Wright’s career.

This relatively small and carefully selected exhibition opens with a chiaroscuro charcoal and white chalk drawing, Self-Portrait Wearing a Black Feathered Hat, from which the artist stares out at the visitor with a melancholy look. It is hung beneath an excerpt from a letter of introduction by his friend Erasmus Darwin, dated 22 November 1775:

The self-portrait is dateable to c.1770 and was executed before Wright went to Italy, at a time when he was mainly based in Liverpool. Wright came to Bath in 1775, a year after Gainsborough had departed, and rented a house in Brock Street between the Royal Crescent and the Circus where he could show his paintings as a means of advertising to the public. Two key aspects of his work are immediately represented in this exhibition by the painting 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 (1771, reworked 1795) and the double portrait (c. 1770-72) of his close friends Mr and Mrs Coltman set in a landscape. The former is a complex candlelight scene of a scientific experiment, which Wright had failed to sell in Italy and brought back with him to Bath. The latter is an attractive and very carefully composed portrait of Mrs Coltman, richly attired in a pink riding habit and seated on a horse, with her husband standing beside her wearing a white coat and blue waistcoat with silver frogging, his outstretched arm and pointing finger resting on her knee. They are brightly lit against a closely observed tree contrasting with a foreboding grey sky in the background; landscape settings were to become an important element in Wright’s portraits after his return from Italy. However, his approach was far removed from Gainsborough’s ability to flatter his sitters with his dazzling technique and, whereas the latter had been at ease with his clients and charmed them with his company, Wright’s very different personality and style did not attract sitters or bring the results he desired.

Few commissions came his way. His unfinished portrait of his daughter, Anna Romana (born in Rome), with her dog, is full of character, and is shown beside that of The Reverend Dr Thomas Wilson and his adopted daughter, Miss Catherine Sophia Macaulay (1776), painted speculatively, ‘for reputation only’. Since Wilson’s private life was a major topic of curiosity in Bath, Wright must have thought that to display a portrait of him in his Bath picture room would attract attention and business. It is a solid, immaculately painted portrait of this wise retired cleric, crowned with a white snowy wig and attired in a black and red academic gown. He is seated beside a table pointing to an open book entitled Macaulay’s History. This had been written by the mother of the young Catherine Sophia, who also points to her mother’s book and stares up attentively at her guardian. The first volume of Catharine Macaulay’s A History of England had appeared in 1763, and on the author’s arrival in Bath, Wilson had offered her his home and library, Alfred House, which became a gathering place for intellectual and fashionable society. Catharine Macaulay’s fame is evident in a figurine on display in the exhibition, produced by the Derby Porcelain Factory c. 1773, which portrays her as The Character of History. She is clad in classical garb, her arm resting on a pile of books on a blue pedestal inscribed with her political ideals: ‘Government a Power Delegated for Happiness Conducted by Wisdom Justice and Mercy.’ This, together with a number of satirical etchings by Matthias and Mary Darly of fashions and manners – including a wicked cartoon, The Historians, where Catharine and Wilson are shown either side of a round table in the library with the bust of Alfred Rex over the mantelpiece, all too reminiscent of Wright’s portrait – give us a glimpse into Bath society. Wright was fortunate in his next portrait sitter, John Milnes (1776), a wealthy cotton manufacturer from Wakefield whose brother Wright had painted in Derby. He became an important patron and owner of a number of paintings by Wright including the Self-Portrait Wearing a Black Feathered Hat featured at the beginning of the exhibition and The Annual Girandola at Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome (1775-6), on display in the following section. In Wright’s striking portrait of him, Milnes is depicted standing on a raised foreground, extremely elegantly dressed in the latest fashions of pale colours, standing out against and contrasted with the ruggedness of a large oak tree trunk, painstakingly painted, his dark hat held out to point to the distant view of the sea and a ship on the horizon.

Wright’s visit to Italy lingered with him during his time in Bath, reflected particularly in his increasing interest in nature and landscape. The next section of the exhibition displays some of the drawings he made in Italy leading to the two great paintings, The Annual Girandola at Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome, and Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples (1776-80). These he worked up in Bath, and they attracted great attention from the local public, as Wright records in a letter from 15 January 1776:

These two magnificent paintings provide the centrepiece of the exhibition and are displayed together with sketches of the Girandola from Castel Sant’Angelo, including a chiaroscuro ‘caprice’ showing the effect of the fireworks issuing from the castle illuminating St Peter’s Basilica. In the painting the scene is framed by two dark trees in the foreground and St Peter’s beyond is illuminated by the fiery orange glow of exploding fireworks with rockets and silver darts flying at all angles against the dark sky. Wright had travelled on from Rome to Naples, which led to his second spectacle, a dramatic scene of a powerful eruption of Vesuvius lighting up the clouds of the dark starry sky with cascades of red molten lava flowing towards a calm silvery sea illuminated by the moon, surely a forerunner of John Martin’s fantastic scenes. The impact of the eruption is minutely described in the fleeing figures in the dark foreground carrying the body of one of the victims of the volcano. These paintings were displayed in Bath, and although much admired, failed to sell. Nevertheless, Wright was to paint subsequently at least thirty views of Vesuvius – a particularly appealing subject at the time to both Grand Tourists and those with a growing interest in the science of geology.

One of the most interesting portraits in the exhibition is that of John Whitehurst (c. 1782-3), member of the Lunar Society and author of the Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth (published 1778), who epitomised the serious inquiry into the earth’s formation that was of interest to some members of the Society. Whitehurst was a friend of Wright and the artist paints him in profile, in the process of drawing A Section of the Strata at Matlock High Tor. As Whitehurst believed the origins of this geological structure lay in the same ‘subterranean fires as the volcanoes of Naples’, Wright included a smoking Vesuvius in the background of his portrait. Wright had written to his brother from Rome on 11 November 1774,

This self-assessment is borne out by Wright’s detailed observation of nature, as exemplified in his later View of Cicero’s Villa, Pozzuoli (c. 1789), and Matlock Tor (c. 1778), both conventional landscapes with trees framing the compositions on the left, but each suffused with very beautiful light.

Another aspect of Wright’s Bath period is explored in the exhibition along a wall devoted to ‘Artist and Bard’. In the summer of 1776 Wright and his family returned briefly to Derby; his wife was expecting a second child and he himself was in need of medical help. He was introduced to the poet William Hayley, who was to play a significant role in Wright’s later life, and his wife Eliza Ball. They are both represented in small ovals finely painted in grisaille, evoking antique cameos. Also in Derby, he painted a very touching portrait of Erasmus Darwin’s sister-in-law Jane with her infant son William, which harks back to his brief visit to Florence since her pose is closely related to Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia. On his return to Bath, and no doubt on the advice of Hayley, Wright turned to figures and stories from literature to provide him with subjects for history paintings that would also ‘improve’ the viewer. One such example is Maria, taken from Laurence Sterne’s popular Sentimental Journey, who, deserted by her lover, descends into madness. Wright depicts her, as described by Sterne, alone, seated beneath a tree and dressed in white, her hand supporting her head, together with her little dog, and with distant landscape beyond. She cuts a solitary figure, evoking the endurance and pity which would be immediately appealing to the sensibility of the late eighteenth-century spectator. Wright’s painting is shown together with his fine line drawing completed in Rome, Study of a Melancholy Girl (1775), which, anticipating the composition in the painting, depicts its protagonist seated with her head sunk into her hand.

A number of works painted by Wright after he had returned to Derby in June 1777 are included in the exhibition and continue the theme of melancholy, such as the The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching the Arms of her Deceased Husband (1785). Perhaps also suggested by Hayley, it draws on a contemporary source, James Adair’s 1775 History of American Indians, which describes how the widow of a war leader is ‘obliged for the first moon, to sit under his mourning war-pole, which is decked with all his martial trophies’. The widow is depicted sitting alone, fulfilling this duty. Her head rests on her hand, silhouetted against a glowing golden sky enfolded by the dark clouds of a thunderstorm. A volcano smoking in the distance adds to the atmosphere. Wright commented of the work, ‘I never painted a picture so universally liked.’ Meanwhile, the qualities of romanticised sentimentality evident in his subject paintings taken from literary sources are transferred into his portraits of The Reverend Henry Case and his companion, Mrs Ellen Morewood (1782), also included in the exhibition. Both figures are seated in a woody landscape with distant views and continue the theme of intellectual solitude. Case is dressed in Van Dyck costume and elegantly posed with a wistful look, his hands resting on an open book and a sleeping dog at his feet. Morewood, draped in a luxurious satin gown, gazes out at the viewer, with the repeated motif of one hand propping up her head and the other delicately holding a diaphanous shawl.

Although the exhibition introduces the viewer to the personality of Joseph Wright and many aspects of his development as an artist it soon becomes apparent that his time in Bath was not a success. There are few paintings to show for it and his slow painstaking work was not in tune with the gaiety of light-hearted Bath society nor is there evidence of any interest in the town or surrounding countryside. Complaining of his ill-health, he was only happy to return to Derbyshire where he continued to paint landscapes, including a number based on sketches he had made in Italy, while his skills as a penetratingly observant portrait painter were more appropriate for sitters such as the industrial pioneers Sir Richard Arkwright and Jedediah Strutt. For a visitor unfamiliar with the work of Joseph Wright of Derby, a timeline of both his life and that of contemporary artists and events, not least in Bath, would have been helpful and informative. However, the accompanying publication, Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond, by Amina Wright, is invaluable for a fuller understanding and appreciation of this interesting and enjoyable exhibition.

Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond is at The Holburne Museum, Bath from 25 January to 5 May 2014. It will be on show at Derby Museum and Art Gallery from 24 May to 31 August 2014.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond by Amina Wright (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2014).