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This portrait belongs to a relatively small group of monochrome drawings that Wright executed in the late 1760s and early 1770s in chalk. Despite the friability and dryness of the medium, the effects of light achieved here have much in common with the most adventurous oil paintings in which Wright pursued the study of highly complex effects of natural and artificial light in gloom: either natural gloom, as in the penumbra of twilight or the pitch darkness of night, or the gloom of interrupted or banished daylight. The consensus of opinion is that these drawings demonstrate Wright’s interest in, not to say indebtedness to, the medium of mezzotint, which had been used in May 1768 by William Pether to reproduce Wright’s somewhat sensational, recent “The Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery”, the first such reproductive print to be published after a work by Wright, and therefore, for any artist, a moment laden with professional and personal promise. But Wright had easy access to a plentiful supply of other models in mezzotint for life-sized portrait heads.
When Paul Mellon bought the present drawing, it was thought to be a self-portrait and was published as such several times. However, it bears only a vague and superficial resemblance to securely documented self-portraits by Wright (ten in number) and indeed differs from them in several respects, namely, the cleft chin and the nose, which is much larger than Wright’s and decidedly hooked by comparison. Instead, Gillian Forrester has raised the possibility that this is a portrait of the artist’s good friend Peter Perez Burdett. Wright had painted Burdett and his wife in 1765, and Burdett reappears as a model in several of Wright's subject pictures, including the “Orrery” and “Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candle-Light” (1765, private collection). The presence of fancy costume in this portrait, particularly the “Van Dyck” collar and cuff, which are also conspicuous in Wright’s “Academy by Lamplight”, of around 1768, is consistent with David Solkin’s suggestion that in the latter work “we are dealing with the projection of an imagined ideal as opposed to a portrayal grounded in reality” (Solkin, 1993, p. 242). Wright’s methods and recurring preoccupations defy easy categorization, however, and a form of dress that elsewhere conjures something of the formality and performance of masquerade here frames a portrait head of startling, disarming intimacy, and Rembrandtesque warmth.

Angus Trumble

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. 259-60, no. 40, pl. 40, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

This striking drawing is one of a group of monochrome chalk portraits executed by Joseph Wright in the late 1760s and early 1770s. The early provenance for cat. 12 is no known, and it is undated, but, according to scholar Benedict Nicolson, the original backboard was inscribed in another hand with the date of 1768m and the style seems consistent with Wright's work of this period. It has been suggested convincingly that Wright's chalk studies may have been influenced by a group of drawings and related mezzotint engravings of life size heads by Thomas Frye (1710-62), but , in any case, these essays in monochrome are congruent with Wright's lifelong preoccupation with exploring the relationship between light and dark. The rich texture of the chalk medium resembles mezzotint, and Wright also may have been inspired by the appearance in May 1768 of William Pether's mezzotint after his celebrated nocturnal painting, The Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrey, which was the first print after his work was published. Nicolson identified cat. 12 as a self-portrait, but it does not resemble any authenticated self-portraits or portraits of Wright. The directness of the man's gaze suggests a close relationship between sitter and artist, and the features are very similar to those of the artist's friend Peter Perez Burdett. Wright painted a double portrait of Burdett and his wide in 1765, and Burdett almost certainly was the model for figures in Wright's Orrey and Three persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candle-light, which were first exhibited in the mid-1760s. The sitter wears a turban and a Van Dyck collar reminiscent of masquerade dress, which was popular in the mid-eighteenth century; similar fancy costume appears in a number of Wright's works of the period, including the Center' Academy by Lamplight.

Gillian Forrester


Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. 27, cat. no. 12, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)