European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 23, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse London scene barbican has stage version of clockwork by Matt Wolf asocial de press i eighteen years if tit in was made a clockwork still cannot be seen on British screens. But it Hiis Lound .1 new Home on stage in London. Set in the next Century and featuring music by members of the u2 Rock band the Royal Shakespeare company s version extensively reworks oxygen. Viewers react in fascination or Shock. A Emit who saw it in 1768 wrote or. Wright of Derby is a very great and uncommon Genius in a Peculiar in those Days Peculiar meant individual or unlike others says the exhibition organizer Lurly Egerton who has gathered about 200 works from around the world for the show. Two years earlier Wright had shown another unique painting of a lecturer explaining the Workings of an orrery a clockwork Model of the solar system. His listeners including two Little boys appear entranced one Man makes careful notes. There Are no paintings like these anywhere else Art historians say. The scenes in Many of them Are illuminated by a Candle lamp demonstrating Wright s Mastery of Light effects. His Industrial pictures show workers lit by the fires at which they work metals. Wright s scientific and Industrial paintings made him the first artist to directly express the spirit of the Industrial revolution. Wright captures the excitement of scientific discovery said David Eraser curator of Derby s museums. Wright was gripped by fire and Light. When he returned to London in 1775 from a visit to Italy he brought his paintings of the annual fireworks display in Rome the Girandola and of a nighttime eruption of the Vesuvius Volcano. All these Are in the Tate show along with Many of the portraits that kept food on Wright s table. Wright fell into obscurity in the 19th Century but in the 1920s he was appreciated by american collectors Serota said. His paintings then Rose in value. In 1984, London s National gallery paid $1.7 million at an auction for his portrait or. And in. Col nun. Wright had charged Collman 63 pounds for the portrait in 1771, then the equivalent of about j300. Derby Art gallery has the largest collection of Wright s work because ils residents admired him and contributed in victorian limes to the museum s Purchase of his paintings. Wright saw Derby transformed from a Market town to an Industrial town. It was famous for its Derby porcelain became a railway town in the 19tb Century and today makes Rolls Royce aircraft engines Eraser said. Eraser said the lunar society which met monthly at the Lime of the full Moon seems to have been Wright s inspiration. There he met people like the steam engine pioneers Matthew Boulton and James Walt Josiah Wedgwood the Potter Joseph Priestley the chemist and or. Erasmus Darwin Grandfather of the evolutionist Charles Darwin. In the 1960s the Derby Church where Wright was buried was demolished and its site now lies under a Beltway. His remains were so carelessly reburied in a local cemetery thai no one now quite knows where they Are the curator said. The exhibition is at the Tate gallery through april 22. It will move to the Paris grand palais from May 17 through Luly 23, and then will go to the new York metropolitan museum of Art sept. 6 through dec. 2. 22 Lori pts mtg Init to i a
