Background ) by
Godfried Schalcken, c. 1690 During his apprenticeship and early career Wright concentrated on portraiture. By 1762, he was an accomplished portrait artist, and his 1764 group portrait
James Shuttleworth, his Wife and Daughter is acknowledged as his first true masterpiece.
Benedict Nicolson suggests that Wright was influenced by the work of
Thomas Frye; in particular by the 18 bust-length
mezzotints which Frye completed just before his death in 1762. It was perhaps Frye's candlelight images that tempted Wright to experiment with subject pieces. Wright's first attempt,
A Girl reading a Letter by Candlelight with a Young Man looking over her shoulder from 1762 or 1763, is a trial in the genre, and is fetching though uncomplicated. Wright's,
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump forms part of a series of candlelit
nocturnes that he produced between 1765 and 1768. There was a
long history of painting candlelit scenes in Western art, although as Wright had not at this date traveled abroad, there remains uncertainty as to what paintings he might have seen in the original, as opposed to
prints. Nicolson, who made studies of both Wright and other candlelight painters such as the 17th-century
Utrecht Caravaggisti, thought their paintings, among the largest in the style, those most likely to have influenced Wright. However, Judy Egerton wonders if he could have seen any, referring to influences of the far smaller works of the
Leiden fijnschilder Godfried Schalcken (1643–1706), whose reputation was much greater in the early 18th century than later. He had worked in England from 1692 to 1697, and several of his paintings can be placed in English collections. Although he was the leading expert writing in English, Nicolson does not suggest that Wright is likely to have known of the 17th-century candlelit narrative religious subjects of
Georges de La Tour and
Trophime Bigot, which, in their seriousness, are the closest works to Wright that are lit only by candle. The Dutch painters' works and other candlelit scenes by 18th-century English painters such as Henry Morland (father of
George) tended instead to exploit the possibilities of semi-darkness for erotic suggestiveness. Some of Wright's own later candlelit scenes were by no means as serious as his first ones, as seen from their titles:
Two Boys Fighting Over a Bladder and
Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight. '' (1765) '' (1768) The first of his candlelit masterpieces,
Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight, was painted in 1765, and showed three men studying a small copy of the "
Borghese Gladiator".
Viewing the Gladiator was greatly admired; but his next painting,
A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun (normally known by the shortened form
A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery or just
The Orrery), caused a greater stir, as it replaced the Classical subject at the center of the scene with one of a scientific nature. Wright's depiction of the awe produced by scientific "miracles" marked a break with traditions in which the artistic depiction of such wonder was reserved for religious events, since to Wright the marvels of the technological age were as awe-inspiring as the subjects of the great religious paintings. In both of these works the candlelit setting had a realist justification. Viewing sculpture by candlelight, when the contours showed well and there might even be an impression of movement from the flickering light, was a fashionable practice described by
Goethe. In the
orrery demonstration the shadows cast by the lamp representing the sun were an essential part of the display, used to demonstrate
eclipses. However there seems no reason, other than heightened drama, to stage the air pump experiment in a room lit by a single candle, and in two later paintings of the subject by
Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo the lighting is normal. The painting was one of a number of British works challenging the set categories of the rigid, French-dictated
hierarchy of genres in the late 18th century, as other types of painting aspired to be treated as seriously as the costumed
history painting of a Classical or mythological subject. In some respects, the
Orrery and
Air Pump subjects resembled
conversation pieces, then largely a form of middle-class portraiture, though soon to be given new status when
Johann Zoffany began to paint the royal family in about 1766. Given their solemn atmosphere however, and as it seems none of the figures are intended to be understood as portraits (even if models may be identified), the paintings can not be regarded as conversation pieces. The 20th-century art historian
Ellis Waterhouse compares these two works to the "
genre serieux" of contemporary French drama, as defined by
Denis Diderot and
Pierre Beaumarchais, a view endorsed by Egerton. An anonymous review from the time called Wright "a very great and uncommon genius in a peculiar way."
The Orrery was painted without a commission, probably in the expectation that it would be bought by
Washington Shirley,
5th Earl Ferrers, an amateur astronomer who had an
orrery of his own, and with whom Wright's friend
Peter Perez Burdett was staying while in
Derbyshire. Figures thought to be portraits of Burdett and Ferrers feature in the painting, Burdett taking notes and Ferrers seated with his son next to the orrery.
Detail An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump followed in 1768, the emotionally charged experiment contrasting with the orderly scene from
The Orrery. The painting, which measures 72 by 94½ inches (183 by 244 cm), shows a grey
cockatiel fluttering in panic as the air is slowly withdrawn from the vessel by the pump. The witnesses display various emotions: one of the girls worriedly watches the fate of the bird, while the other is too upset to observe and is comforted by her father; two gentlemen (one of them dispassionately timing the experiment) and a boy look on with interest, while the young lovers to the left of the painting are absorbed only in each other. The scientist himself looks directly out of the picture, as if challenging the viewer to judge whether the pumping should continue, killing the bird, or whether the air should be replaced and the cockatiel saved.
David Solkin suggests that little sympathy is directed toward the bird; the subjects of the painting show the dispassionate detachment of the evolving scientific society. Individuals are concerned for each other: the father for his children, the young man for the girl, but the distress of the cockatiel elicits only careful study. Another reading is that interest in the bird increases from the left side to the right; viewers on the left are scientifically interested (older men and boy) or distracted (young lovers), while those on the right are concerned (girls, older man, assistant) or attending to those who are (father). To one side of the boy assistant at the right side in the rear, the cockatiel's empty cage can be seen on the wall, and to further heighten the drama it is unclear whether the boy is lowering the cage on the pulley to allow the bird to be replaced after the experiment or hoisting the cage back up, certain of its former occupant's death. It has also been suggested that he may be drawing the curtains to block out the light from the full moon. showed the demonstrator in a more reassuring pose. The bird here was a common songbird.
Jenny Uglow believes that the boy echoes the figure in the last print of
William Hogarth's
The Four Stages of Cruelty by pointing out the arrogance and potential cruelty of experimentation, The neutral stance of the central character and the uncertain intentions of the boy with the cage were both later ideas: an early study, discovered on the back of a self-portrait, omits the boy and shows the natural philosopher reassuring the girls. In this sketch it is obvious that the bird will survive, and thus the composition lacks the power of the final version.
Lochlann Jain has analyzed the painting in the context of a contemporary cultural history and medicine of human suffocation and choking. Wright, who took many of his subjects from English poetry, probably knew the following passage from "The Wanderer" (1729) 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 powerful 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. . The cockatiel would have been a rare bird at the time, "and one whose life would never in reality have been risked in an experiment such as this". It did not become well known until after it was shown in illustrations to the accounts of the voyages of
Captain Cook in the 1770s. Prior to Cook's voyage, cockatiels had been imported only in small numbers as exotic cage-birds. Wright had painted one in 1762 at the home of William Chase, featuring it both in his portrait of Chase and his wife (
Mr & Mrs William Chase) and a separate study,
The Parrot. In selecting such a rarity for this scientific sacrifice, Wright not only chose a more dramatic subject than the "lungs-glass", but was perhaps making a statement about the values of society in the
Age of Enlightenment. On the table are various other pieces of equipment that the natural philosopher would have used during his demonstration: a thermometer, candle snuffer and cork, and close to the man seated to the right is a pair of
Magdeburg hemispheres, which would have been used with the air pump to demonstrate the difference in pressure exerted by the air and a vacuum: when the air was pumped out from between the two hemispheres they were impossible to pull apart. The air pump itself is rendered in exquisite detail, a faithful record of the designs in use at the time. What may be a human skull in the large liquid-filled glass bowl would not have been a normal piece of equipment; William Schupbach suggests that it and the candle, which is presumably lighting the bowl from behind, form a
vanitas—the two symbols of mortality reflecting the cockatiel's struggle for life. The single source of light is obscured behind the bowl on the table; some hint of a lamp glass can be seen around the side of the bowl, but
David Hockney has suggested that the bowl itself may contain Sulphur, giving a powerful single light source that a candle or oil lamp would not. In the earlier study a candle holder is visible, and the flame is reflected in the bowl. Hockney
believes that many of the
Old Masters used optical equipment to assist in their painting, and suggests that Wright may have used lenses to transfer the image to paper rather than painting directly from the scene, as he believes the pattern of shadows thrown by the lighting could have been too complicated for Wright to have captured so accurately without assistance. but Wright never identified any of the subjects or suggested they were based on real people. Wright's scientific paintings adopted elements from the tradition of
history painting but lacked the heroic central action typical of that genre. While ground-breaking, they are regarded as peculiar to Wright, whose unique style has been explained in many ways. Wright's provincial status and ties to the
Lunar Society, a group of prominent industrialists, scientists and intellectuals who met regularly in Birmingham between 1765 and 1813, have been highlighted, as well as his close association with and sympathy for the advances made in the burgeoning
Industrial Revolution. Other critics have emphasised a desire to capture a snapshot of the society of the day, in the tradition of William Hogarth but with a more neutral stance that lacks the biting satire of Hogarth's work. ==Reception==