The first key lot to be announced in the upcoming London auction series, An Academy by Lamplight from 1769 was a trademark candlelit picture but is now one of the artist’s few works of this quality and scale remaining in private hands. The £2.5m-3.5m pitch is the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the artist at auction.
The 4ft 2in x 3ft 4in (1.27 x 1.02m) oil on canvas has been consigned to Sotheby’s from Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk, having descended through the family of wealthy carpet manufacturer Sir Savile Crossley (1857-1935), 1st Baron Somerleyton.
The painting was almost certainly the picture that Wright of Derby exhibited at the Society of Artists in the year it was painted. The auctioneers have billed it as “a supreme example of his dramatic rendering of light and shade and his association with the enlightenment movement”.
Innovative young artist
Depicting six young draughtsmen contemplating the cast of Nymph with a Shell, an Hellenistic statue housed in the Villa Borghese in Rome during the 18th century but now the Louvre, the painting is one of two versions of the subject painted by Wright of Derby.
This first example is well known and, most recently, was part of an exhibition of the artist’s work at The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool that ran from November 2007 to February 2008.
The other painting of An Academy by Lamplight is identically sized but dates from 1770. It was acquired by Paul Mellon in 1964 and is now in the collection at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven.
Both works date from a period when Wright was establishing himself as one of the most exciting and innovative young artists in Britain. His most famous painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, was produced a year before Sotheby’s picture.
Senior specialist in British paintings at Sotheby’s Julian Gascoigne said: “Joseph Wright of Derby is one of a small and select group of British 18th century artists whose work transcends national boundaries and speaks to a wider global sensibility. Drama and passion are at the core of his oeuvre and this is particularly true of this exceptional painting.”
The current auction record for Wright of Derby was set at Sotheby's New York in January 2007 when a portrait of Robert Shore Milnes fetched $6.4m (£3.25m).
