Barrie Sheppard continues his exploration of the world of British art and artists. Barrie writes: The old adage of not judging a book by its cover remains good advice, reminding us of how outward impressions can be deceiving. However, a book’s cover can tell us a good deal about the content of a book, if not about the quality of its content. Such is the cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses (London, 1992), which is decorated with a reproduction of Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting, Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight.
The painting is an early Wright candle-light picture. It shows three men examining a cast of the “Borghese Gladiator”, a reproduction of an original Hellenist sculpture discovered in Italy and held originally in the Villa Borghese, but now in the Louvre. The sculpture was greatly admired in the eighteenth century for the truth of the athlete’s anatomical structure and the vigour of the pose, which is not surprising given that century’s interest in all things classical.
The three figures are Wright himself, his friend Peter Perez Burdett, the draughtsman and map maker who produced a detailed map of Derbyshire – an “Enlightenment” project showing the shire’s, land forms, roads, towns and villages); the third figure is thought to be John Wilson, another of Wright’s friends, who appears to be instructing the other two. Wright has placed himself centrally, highlighted by the candle-light and the red lapels of his jacket. Burdett is to his left with his silhouetted back to the viewer. Wright holds a partly concealed drawing of the Gladiator, cropped from the cover-picture for reasons of space. The composition is lit from within by a flame obscured by the Burdett figure; the stand, though, is visible.
As in all of his candle-light pictures Wright has employed chiaroscuro to great effect. The bright light against the darkness dramatizes the activity depicted, a drama reflecting that of the dramatic thrust of the sharply angled gladiator cutting across the organic, human figures. Furthermore, being lit from within by a concealed light source, it is as if the “lesson” itself is emanating its own light as a reflection of its truth. This, by extension, suggests that the pages behind the cover of the book contain a similar light of truth.
Elements of the painting reflect specific elements of the principles Reynolds propounded in the 17 discourses that form the book of which the cover is illustration. Reynolds, whose aesthetic was formed during his time in Rome studying, principally, Michelangelo and Raphael, enjoined the Royal Academy students to learn from the old masters, as the three men are doing in Wright’s picture.
Repeatedly, throughout the discourses, Reynolds stressed that Nature was to be the students’ guide in everything: nature, that is, in its perfection, spoilt not by the imperfections that time brings. In a portrait, for example, a sitter should be depicted in his or her ideal form, without individuating imperfections – without “warts and all”.
This principle is reflected in the three “persons” examination of the anatomical perfection and pose of the Gladiator, which one of them, presumably Wright, has drawn as an exercise to be compared with the original – its truth to the sculpture being a reflection of the sculpture’s truth to nature.
The size, placement and the highlighting of the Wright figure in the composition makes it a self-portrait, though one in a setting additional to the usual self-portrait genre. In his Discourses, Reynolds placed the portrait genre second in importance to history painting. However, he did allow that a portrait could be elevated in the hierarchy of genres by it being placed in an historical setting. The self-portrait in the Wright work is thus elevated to history painting level by the allegorical dimension of its context. Of course, the designer of the Penguin book may not have had this connection in mind, but the connection can be made nevertheless.
Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight was an important milestone in Wright’s career. As one of his early candlelight pictures, it established him, when it was exhibited in London at the Society of Artists Exhibition in 1765, as an oil painter of considerable note in the world of English art.
Another Self-portrait by Wright, from around the same period, can be seen in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.