Barrie Sheppard considers Joseph Wright’s interest in self-portraiture by delving back in history. Barrie write: Joseph Wright of Derby painted six self portraits in oils approximately ten years apart. The NGV portrait of 1765-1768, donated to the gallery by Mrs Alina Cade in 2009, is one of the better works, if not the best. It was painted when he was about 30 years of age. NGV Curator Laurie Benson gives an excellent account of the portrait and its provenance in his Art Journal 50 article “A Masterpiece Revealed…” (https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-masterpiece-revealed-joseph-wright-of-derby-in-melbourne/)
The work is in the half-portrait format in three-quarter profile with Wright turned to directly engage the viewer. With his chin cupped in his right hand, his elbow rests on a sill, or parapet, a compositional device that made easier the treatment of half-portraits at their cut-off points. Composed and assured, he wears an exotic turban and a luxurious green, fur-trimmed coat with gold edging, not the typical day-dress of the 18th century.
Chiaroscuro has been used to great effect – Wright emerges from a dark background into a soft light, his flesh modelled with a subtler chiaroscuro. His facial features, the head-scarf and sleeve cuff are highlighted with deft touches of white. The work’s general form, the sumptuous coat with its rich fur collar and the effects of the chiaroscuro evoke the work of a master of an earlier time: Rembrandt, in particular – his self portrait of 1640.
Rembrandt painted this self-portrait when he was close in age to the Wright of the NGV work. Wright has mimicked the half-portrait, three-quarter profile with the head turned to engage the viewer; likewise with the arm resting on a ledge. Only the position of his right hand differs. He has dressed himself in exotic dress, as Rembrandt sometimes did in his self-portraits, though in this case it is the dress typical of the earlier 15th century. The gold trim on Wright’s jacket echoes the gold chain Rembrandt wears. And he has imitated the dramatic effect of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro. Significantly, Wright described himself as the “Rembrandt of the Midlands”.
The line of influences upon the Wright work was long, for, if he was influenced by Rembrandt, Rembrandt himself was influenced by works of two High Renaissance masters he saw at an auction sale in Amsterdam in 1637: They were Titian’s Portrait of a Man with a Quilted Sleeve of 1512, and Raphael’s portrait of his friend Baldassari Castiglione of 1514-15.
The similarity of the Rembrandt to the Titian, in form and composition, is plain to see. The Titian portrait is believed to be of the Italian Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto, Titian’s close friend. Ariosto has turned to look at the viewer, assured to the point of arrogance. The treatment of the copious quilted sleeve is remarkable; the strip of white undershirt across his shoulder provides a dramatic highlight. The two artists, painter and poet, greatly admired each other’s work, reflecting the close affinity of the arts of poetry and painting in their time.
The second work to capture Rembrandt’s attention at the Amsterdam auction was Raphael’s, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglioni (1514-15). It also reflects the close affinity between painter and writer: the two artists, both originally from Urbino, were close friends who held each other’s work in high esteem. Castiglioni was the author of the influential, The Book of the Courtier, a work on courtly self-conduct. And Raphael himself was a poet of some note. Poetry and painting were not in competition, but were, so to speak, “the yolk and white of the one shell”, to borrow an image from the poet W B Yeats.
Raphael’s Castiglioni is dressed in winter costume. It is elegant, yet discreet, in line with Castiglioni’s view of the dress of an accomplished courtly gentleman. He wears a beret over a turban. His doublet is trimmed with fur; under it he wears a bloused white shirt that picks up the highlight on his forehead, but contrasts with the shades of black, gray, and beige that tones with the flesh of the subject’s face and hands, as well as the diffused light of the background.
Rembrandt was so taken with the Raphael that he would have added it to his collection had the price at 3500 gilders not been beyond his means (for his Night Watch, he received half that amount) Instead, he drew a sketch of it, substituting his own face for that of Castiglioni’s.
The clear line of influence from Titian and Raphael to Rembrandt to Joseph Wright attests to a comment made by Sir Isaac Newton’s (1675) about the indebtedness of great minds to the past: that they “stand on the shoulders of giants”.