# A Philosopher Lecturing with a Mechanical Planetary [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [WRIGHT, Joseph]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 147,3 x 203,2 cm ## Commentary Like other artists, Joseph Wright went to Italy, but he was more interested in its natural effects than its art. It is apt that he should be known as Wright of derby, for it was there that he was to find pioneers of science and industry who provided him with subject-matter and with patrons. His is a provincial milieu, with serious rather than sophisticated interests, more doggedly bourgeois than the capital, and still optimistic about the benefits of progress. As Hogarth has been the initiator of 'la peinture morale', so Wright was the initiator, and the finest exponent, of the century's final contribution to genre: the industrial picture. ## Related artworks - [A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno]() - [Academy by Lamplight \(detail\)]() - [Academy by Lamplight]() - [An Academy by Lamplight]() - [Earthstopper at the Bank of Derwent]() - [Experiment with the Air Pump]() - [Indian Widow]() - [Iron Forge Viewed from Outside]() - [Landscape with Rainbow]() - [Miravan Opening the Grave of his Forefathers]() - [Portrait of Jane Darwin and Her Son William Brown Darwin]() - [Portrait of Rev. Christopher Alderson]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()