Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734–1797, British, active in Italy (1773–75)
Title:
Self-Portrait
Date:
ca. 1780
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
24 x 28 3/4 inches (61 x 73 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1997.23
Gallery Label:
Wright produced at least nine self-portraits during the course of his long career. As Benedict Nicolson observed nearly fifty years ago, all of them bring out "one side or another of this contradictory but in no way unaccountable character: the vivacity and the mildness, the conviviality and the querulousness, the vigor and the frailty-many things short of duplicity and meanness." This fine self-portrait originally belonged to Wright's eldest daughter, Anna, and her husband, a surgeon, and must date from about 1780, the period following Wright's frustrating and unsuccessful sojourn in Bath as a portrait painter to "the great people," whom (unlike Gainsborough) he found irritating, "fantastical and whimmy." Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005