England's Caravaggio

“Long seen as a quintessentially modern and progressive figure – one of the artistic icons of the English Enlightenment – [Matthew] Craske overturns this traditional view of [Wright of Derby].” So states the publicity for a new study of England’s greatest realist artist, Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), the painter who has a claim to be called England’s Caravaggio. But Matthew Craske demonstrates “the extent to which Wright, rather than being a spokesman for scientific progress, was actually a melancholic and sceptical outsider, who increasingly retreated into a solitary, rural world of philosophical and poetic reflection, and whose artistic vision was correspondingly dark and meditative.”