Page 39 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.
P. 39
© COURTAULD IMAGES -THEWITT LIBRARY
Fig 1. JOSEPH WRIGHT, Rocks withWaterfall, 1772. Private Collection. Fig.2. JOSEPH WRIGHT, MatlockTor by Moonlight, 1777-80. Leicester
Art Gallery.
years. His findings of basalt outcrops suggested that entific’ view. By contrast,Wright’s painting of Matlock
at one time the cool northern moors of the Peak Dis- Tor by Moonlight, 1777-80 (Fig.2), with its vertigin-
trict had also been a volcanic region, leading him to ous cliffs, wooded slopes and shining river was de-
speculate that the whole globe had been formed by liberately Picturesque, confirming William Gilpin’s
subterraneous fire, a process of constant, tumultuous breathless observation that the vale was ‘a romantic
change.Wright’s Derbyshire paintings often depict the and most delightful scene in which the ideas of sublimity and
‘surfaces’ thatWhitehurst presented in sectional form, beauty are blended in a high degree’, and that ‘it is impos-
while his drawings of rock formations, caves and water- sible to view such scenes without the imagination taking fire.’4
falls combine careful observation with a personal, With the moon shining through the clouds, the dark,
dramatic vision, as in his extraordinary Rocks with magisterial folds of earth acquire new mystery.
Waterfall of 1772 (Fig.1), where, as Benedict Nicolson
put it ‘there is no attempt to tidy up the barbarity of na- 3. Rocks withWaterfall, Private Collection: Egerton, op.cit., cat. 107.
ture, but the vision is rushed down on to canvas in all its 4. William Gilpin, Observations on Picturesque Beauty (written 1772,
incoherence, and yet makes a coherent picture’.3 In the
Appendix to his Inquiry into the Original State and For- publ. 1785) 1792 edn. Pp. 217-8 ,219: also quoted in Stephen
mation of the Earth, in 1778, for example,Whitehurst Daniels, JosephWright,Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 68-9.
drew the strata at Matlock as interleaved sections Matlock Tor by Moonlight, c 1777-80, Leicester Art Gallery,
sliding into the chasm of the river Derwent: a ‘sci- Leicester.
39
