Painting Detail
Iron Forge Viewed from WithoutArtist: Joseph Wright
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 105x140 cm
Date: 1773
Genre: Genre Painting
Source: Acquired from the artist, 1774
This picture is based on a very precise pen drawing in the City Art Gallery in Derby. The depiction of a man working in a smithy at night provided the artist with a chance to show different lighting effects. The way in which the red glow is set against the pale gleam of the moon, the contrasts of light and shade, give an ordinary scene a romantic nuance.
This was the first English painting to enter the Hermitage when it was acquired by Catherine the Great in 1774. We do not know how it was that Catherine had heard of the talent of this artist who was still so little known in his own country, but this purchase characterizes her as a perspicacious collector. Between 1771 and 1773 Wright painted five pictures of an iron forge, of which this was the last. With northern practicality he paints the inside of the forge, but it is light which dominates the canvas, the warm light in the forge itself and the complex shadows it throws on the walls and onto the ground outside, and the cold light of the moon.