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© DERBY ART GALLERY of symbolic stones to conjure up Romantic ruminations on
irretrievable greatness’.16
Fig. 8b. JOSEPH WRIGHT, Romeo and Juliet.TheTomb Scene, 1790.
Derby Art Gallery. Virgil’sTomb also takes a significant place in the long
line of paintings by Joseph Wright that celebrate in-
it also suggests the human ability to conjure those vention and ‘making’ in all its forms, often suggesting
forms and make them ‘real’. It is the dwelling place access – sometimes dangerous – to the secrets of na-
of the imagination, the soul within the skull. AtVir- ture, endowing men with power. Several of these
gil’s tomb pilgrims remember the poet’s death while paintings contrast figures in a lamp-lit interior to the
simultaneously celebrating his immortal verse. As cool light of the moon outside, intensifying the appre-
Robert Rosenblum puts it, it is an instance of ‘the power hension of light and life by setting them against the
threat of darkness. In 1769 Wright had painted A
16. Robert Rosenblum, Transformations in Late Eighteenth-Century Art, Philosopher by Lamplight (also known as Hermit Studying
Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 117. Anatomy), perhaps a holy man, stumbled upon by awed
pilgrims as he broods over bones in a dark grotto,
17. A Philosopher by Lamplight, 1769, Derby Art Gallery; Egerton meditating on transience while the flickering lamp
op.cit., cat. 41. contrasts to the moonlight outside (Fig. 24).17 Before
Wright left for Italy, however, he painted several cave-
18. Robert Rosenblum, ‘Joseph Wright of Derby: Gothick Realist’, like interiors where the emphasis is not on death but
Art News, vol 59 no 1, March 1960,p.26. on creation, including his scenes of iron forges and
blacksmiths’ shops, where the men’s work is illumin-
19. A Blacksmith’s Shop, 1771. Of the two paintings of this name, one is ated by the blazing glow of the molten metal that they
in theYale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, the themselves are creating. It is as Rosenblum remarked,
other in Derby Art Gallery. An Iron ForgeViewed fromWithout, 1773, ‘a most extraordinary light source, the blinding white glow
is in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad See Egerton op.cit. cat of a newly forged iron-bar’.18 In two versions of The
47,4,50. For comparison with Hercules and Apollo, see Egerton Blacksmith’s Shop of 1771, the workshop resembles
p. 104, citing the Morning Chronicle, 29 May 1772. an abandoned church, with arches and columns and
angels carved above the doorway. And if this setting
reminded viewers of the classical ruins introduced
into Renaissance Nativity scenes, the heroic stance of
the iron founder reminded them equally of classical
divinities like Apollo and Hercules. In another paint-
ing, The Iron Forge Viewed from Without,Wright removes
the front wall so that the spectator can see both the
work within and the mood scudding between the
clouds without, just as he does with the grotto at
Posilippo in its moonlit setting (Fig. 9).19
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