Collection: Joseph Wright of Derby

Joseph Wright (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797), styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English painter who specialised in portrait painting and landscape art. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution". Wright is notable for his use of tenebrism, an exaggerated form of the better known chiaroscuro effect, which emphasizes the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects.

His paintings of the birth of science out of alchemy, often based on the meetings of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a group of scientists and industrialists living in the English Midlands, are a significant record of the struggle of science against religious values in the period known as the Age of Enlightenment. Many of Wright's paintings and drawings are owned by Derby City Council, and are on display at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

He studied under Thomas Hudson. His style took its cues from Rembrandt and Gerard van Honthorst. Among his canonical works are Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight, Earthstopper on the Banks of the Derwent, Virgil's Tomb, and Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight.

His oeuvre falls under Romanticism.