Despite being known as a ‘painter of light’, Joseph Wright of Derby returned repeatedly to night scenes, with darkness and melancholy becoming major themes in his work and mirroring his concern with death and tragedy. In this book, Craske presents a fresh approach to Wright that questions accepted understandings of the artist.

As one of the artistic icons of the English Enlightenment, Wright is generally considered to be a progressive figure. Craske challenges this assumption, demonstrating that rather than being a spokesman for scientific progress, Wright was a sceptical and solitary man who took solace in the rural world of philosophy and poetry.

This provocative study of one of the 18th-century’s greatest artists takes contemporary reports of his melancholia and nervous disposition seriously, and questions accepted understandings of the artist. It provides readers with new interpretations of some of his most famous paintings.