Joseph Wright of Derby, A.R.A.

With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London;
From whom acquired by the late owner, in 1966.

London, Agnew's, Realism and Romance in English Painting, 1966, no. 28

B. Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, Painter of Light, 2 vols, London and New York 1968, vol. I, pp. 84 and 251, cat. no. 261, vol. II, p. 201, reproduced plate 319.

The canvas has been relined. The paint surface appears to be in very good overall condition, with no sign of wear or major repairs. Much of the original impasto is well preserved. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveal a filigree of meticulous minor retouchings throughout, some broader retouchings in the foreground and in the margins. The varnish is only marginally discoloured. Offered in a later gilt wood frame in fair condition.
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This majestic and ethereal view of Lake Nemi, looking south east across the Campagna towards Mount Circeo on the coast, is one of a series of views by Wright of lakes Nemi and Albano from the early 1790s. These include a pair of small companion views of both lakes, one at sunrise and the other at sunset, in the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven), and a similar View of Lake Nemi previously in the Dale collection, sold in these rooms on 9 November 1994, lot 82 (Private Collection). As Nicholson commented, when referring to these last 'dream-like' Nemi and Albano views, 'no landscapes in his entire work are more poetical than these final evocations of Claude'.¹ Known to the Romans as The Mirror of Venus, Lake Nemi lies just south of Rome and both its history and beauty made it an extremely popular subject with British artists. John Robert Cozens and Francis Towne both painted several views of the lake, as did Turner a generation later. Few artist, however, have ever captured the timeless serenity and evocative warm light of the view quite like Wright, who imbues the whole with a rocky, earthy feel, and a tranquillity unmatched by his peers.  

Wright travelled in Italy between 1773 and 1775. His experience of the Italian landscape had a profound impact on his work and inspired many of his greatest paintings in the latter years of his life. Before he went to Italy Wright had painted very little in the way of pure landscapes. However, the warm serenity of the Campagna, the magnificence of the topography around Naples and the innate romanticism of the ruins of antiquity, kindled a Claudian awakening in his imagination. Candidly following in the footsteps of the Dutch Italianates of the early seventeenth-century, as befits an artist brought up in the Dutch Caravaggesque tradition, and influenced by the example of fellow British painters such as John Robert Cozens, not only did landscapes come to dominate much of his work both during his tour and after his return from Italy, but he also began to develop much more of an interest in the landscape backgrounds of many of his portraits. Together with his earlier industrial scenes these late landscapes are some of his most important contributions to British art. Building on the precedent of past masters such as Richard Wilson, and imbued with a dramatic and sophisticated understanding of light learnt both from the northern Caravaggesques and his own study of nature, they broke new ground and presage the developments of a later generation of romantic painters, such as Blake, Turner, Constable, and Palmer.

1. See Nicholson, under Literature, p. 84.