Joseph Wright of Derby, A.R.A.

Possibly Thomas Hardman;

Possibly his sale, Manchester, 1838, lot 40 (as the River Arno running through finely wooded country..., 22 x 30 in.);

Possibly N. Philips;

Possibly Thomas Borrow;

William Bemrose (1831–1908);

Presented to his daughter, Mrs R. G. Wheler in 1908;

Her sale ('The Property of Mrs. Trevor Wheler'), London, Sotheby's, 10 December 1958, lot 114 (as An Evening Landscape with a town on the banks of a river, a fishing boat by a bridge), for £50 to Mrs Frank;

With Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd., London;

The Hon. Sybil, Viscountess Eccles (1904–1977), according to a label, verso;

Presented to the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1960s;

With John Mitchell and Son, according to a label, verso. 

New York, Durlacher Brothers, A Loan Exhibition, Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734–1797, 1960, no. 23.

B. Nicholson, Joseph Wright of Derby, Painter of Light, 2 vols., New York and London 1968, vol. 1, pp. 84 & 259-60, no. 290, vol. 2, p. 206, pl. 327.

The canvas has been recently relined and the relining is sound. The paint surface has been fairly recently cleaned and restored and would appear to need no further immediate attention. There is a Z- shaped restored tear in the centre right starting in the sky above the church and extending into the foliage to the right. There is an area of retouching in the extreme upper left corner, but these retouchings may prove to be unnecessary as it is not clear what they are covering. There are further minor spot retouchings to the pink cloud above the bridge and to an area in the same expanse of cloud above the church, around the afore-mentioned tear. The paint surface in general is fairly well- preserved with the canvas grain visible in certain areas as is common in works by Wright of Derby. Offered in a late gilt frame.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This rare picture is the only recorded painting of Florence by Joseph Wright of Derby, who visited the city between 19^th June and 4^th July 1775 on his way back from Rome. It was probably painted for one of Wright’s important midlands patrons, William Hartman of Manchester, and was later owned by William Bemrose, Wright’s first biographer. The view is taken from the south east, looking west along the Arno, with the famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore dominating the city’s skyline on the right.

Wright spent nearly two years in Italy and was deeply moved by the beauty of the landscape and the purity of the light, both of which remained profound influences on his work for the rest of his life. Based primarily in Rome he travelled widely, getting as far south as Naples and the Amalfi Coast, and spent a fortnight in Florence on his way back to England in 1775. An entry in Wrights account book among pictures from the 1790s records ‘A view of the City of Florence sun rising, £52.10’. Nicholson suggests that this must refer to another version on the basis that the present painting is too small a picture to have cost such a price, however no other painting of Florence by Wright is known.  A related drawing in Derby Art Gallery, however, translates the composition into an oval and suggests that the artist may have intended to reproduce it in another form of media, such as pottery.

The early provenance of the painting is somewhat uncertain. Nicholson records a label on the reverse of the canvas which is said to have read ‘this painting by Mr. Wright of Derby was presented to me by my nephew Nat Philipps [sic] Wed. Aug. 28 1794. Thos. Borrow J. P. Original picture left as a gift to Mrs. R. G. Wheler by her father W^m. Bemrose 19/8/08’.¹ No such label survives on the reverse of the canvas today, though we know that a man by the name of N. Philips did own a view of Florence by Wright as the artist himself confirmed as much in a letter to J. L. Philips dated 27^th December 1794.² However this picture did appear in Mrs Wheler’s sale at Sotheby’s in 1958, and so we can be sure that the last part of the inscription was accurate. William Bemrose (1831-1908), who is the first securely recorded owner of this picture, was director of the Royal Crown Derby porcelain works and the first biographer of Joseph Wright of Derby. A great collector of both paintings and works of art, he was himself an amateur painter and chair of the Derby Art Gallery Committee. As with the previous lot, it is possible that the painting had originally belonged to Wright’s patron William Hardman, and may be the picture described as ‘the River Arno running through a finely wooded country… 22 x 30 in.’ that appeared in the Thomas Hardman sale in Manchester in 1838, lot 40. Wright painted two Grotto scenes in the Gulf of Salerno, one a sunset the other moonlit,³ for Hardman in the 1780s and he owned several other works by the artist, as well as a large collection of contemporary English paintings.

^1. Nicholson, p. 259.
^2. This letter is quoted in W. Bemrose, The Life and Works of Joseph Wright, A.R.A., commonly called ‘Wright of Derby’, London 1885, p. 94.
^3. Nicholson, nos. 279 & 280.