Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright, a lawyer's son from Derby, trained in London under the portraitist Thomas Hudson and spent most of his career in his home town. He is best known for candlelit scenes of science, such as A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, where one hidden light picks out rapt faces. His links to the Lunar Society's scientists and industrialists made him the first painter of the Industrial Revolution, from forges to cotton mills.