Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright, styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English painter who lived from 1734 to 1797 and specialised in portrait painting and landscape art. He has been acclaimed as the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. He is notable for his use of tenebrism, an exaggerated form of the better known chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. His paintings of the birth of science out of alchemy, often based on the meetings of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, are a significant record of the struggle of science against religious values in the Age of Enlightenment.