An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a vacuum. Will the lecturer expel the air completely and kill the bird, or allow the air back in and revive it? Wright focuses on the viewers‘ differing reactions – from the girl unable to watch to the lovers with eyes only for each other.
This is the largest, most ambitious and dramatic of the series of ’candlelight’ pictures Wright painted during the 1760s. It captures the drama of a staged scientific experiment but it also functions as a vanitas – a painting concerning the passing of time, the limits of human knowledge and the frailty of life itself.
Provenance: Purchased from the artist and taken to Paris in 1824 by the Anglo-French dealer John Arrowsmith; reputedly sold by him in 1825 to an anon, client (possibly to another dealer, the disposal of his stock being enforced by financial difficulties); anon, sale, Henry, Paris, 31 March–1 April 1828 (additional lot, unnumbered), bt by the impresario and collector Jean-François Boursault; among 80 pictures from Boursault’s collection purchased c. 1838 by Henry Artaria for the collection of Edmund Higginson, Saltmarsh Castle, Herefordshire; Higginson sale, Christie’s June 1846 (77), bt by the dealer Thomas Rought; subsequently with the dealer D.T. White, from whom purchased by 1853 by George Young; his sale Christie’s 19 May 1866 (25), bt Cox for Henry Vaughan, by whom presented to the National Gallery 1886.
Text from The National Gallery
Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: The National Gallery, London
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734 – 1797)
Date: 1768
Image Details
Date: 10 April 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/24s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a National Gallery asset. This image cannot be licensed.