POPULAR SCIENCE 



THE SCIENTIFIC PICTURES OF 

 JOSEPH WRIGHT 



By F. W. SHURLOCK, B.A., B.Sc, F.Inst.P. 

 Principal, Derby Technical College 



Wright's three great scientific pictures, " The Orrery," " The 

 Air-Pump," and " The Alchymist," accurately reflect the state 

 of physical science in his day, and it is a very fortunate circum- 

 stance that they are now exhibited together in the Art Gallery 

 of his native town. 



Wright of Derby, as he is usually called, was born in 1734 

 and died in 1797, so that his working period coincides with the 

 latter half of the eighteenth century. The physical science 

 of the period, in contrast with that of our own times, was un- 

 specialised and a matter of general interest among people of 

 education. The number of educated people was, of course, 

 smaller than in our own time, smaller too in proportion to the 

 total population, the chief subjects of study being the classical 

 languages and mathematics, but it was a happy feature that 

 people with this training should nevertheless take a keen interest 

 in the teachings of science. There seems to have been no 

 tendency among the votaries of art to regard with antipathy 

 the progress of science, and no tendency to decry the value of 

 science in favour of the humanities. They were more leisurely 

 days when the keenness of the struggle for existence and the 

 inevitable tendency to minute specialisation, which necessarily 

 restricts the scope of our intellectual interests, had not yet 

 rendered it wholly unprofitable for any one man to take all 

 knowledge for his province, but in an age when we have been 

 not inaptly described as an unscientific people trying to live 

 in a scientific age, one cannot help looking back with some 

 regret to the more general interest in scientific knowledge of 

 former times. In Joseph. Wright we have a distinguished 

 artist who was obviously an interested and careful student 

 of contemporary science and whose knowledge of the scientific 

 details portrayed in his pictures is surprisingly accurate. 



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