Derby Museum and Art Gallery
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Derby Museum, Library and Art Gallery is housed in a building which was given to Derby by Michael Thomas Bass.
The museum and art gallery includes a whole gallery displaying the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby, many of which are owned by Derby council, and a large collection of porcelain from Derby and the surrounding area. Other displays include archaeology, natural history, geology and military collections.
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[edit] Derby and the Enlightenment connection
A display adjacent to the Wright gallery tells something of the Lunar Society members and how they were linked. Derby was significant in the eighteenth century for its role in the Enlightenment, a period in which science and philosophy challenged the divine right of kings to rule. The enlightenment has many strands, including the largely philosophical 'Scottish enlightenment' centred around the philosopher David Hume, and political changes that culminated in the French revolution, but the English Midlands was an area where many key figures of industry and science came together at the meetings of the famous Lunar society. These included Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood and others, with Benjamin Franklin corresponding from America[1]
Although meetings were held in Birmingham, Erasmus Darwin, father of Charles Darwin, lived in Derby, and some of the paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, which are themselves notable for their use of brilliant light on shade, are of Lunar society meetings. One has the unusual title of An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), and shows people gathered round observing an early experiment into the nature of air and its ability to support life. Another entitled The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone (1771) depicts the discovery of the element phosphorus by German alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669. A flask in which a large quantity of urine has been boiled down is seen bursting into light as the phosphorus, which is abundant in urine, ignites spontaneously in air.
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery shows an early mechanism for demonstrating the movement of the planets around the sun, and an actual orrery is on display in the centre of the gallery in front of the painting. The Scottish scientist, astronomer and lecturer James Ferguson (1710- 1776) undertook a series of lectures in Derby in July 1762[2]. They were based on his book Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Optics &c., published in 1760. In order to illustrate his lectures he used various machines, models and instruments. Wright possibly attended Ferguson’s lecture, especially as tickets for the event were available from John Whitehurst, his close neighbour, the clockmaker and scientist. The artist could also have drawn on Whitehurst’s practical knowledge to find out more about the orrery and its operation.
[edit] Significance of Joseph Wright's paintings
These factual paintings are considered to have metaphorical meaning too, the bursting into light of the phosphorus in front of a praying figure signifying the problematic transition from faith to scientific understanding and enlightenment, and the various expressions on the figures around the bird in the airpump indicating concern over the possible inhumanity of the coming age of science. [3] These paintings represent a high point in scientific enquiry which began the undermining of the power of religion in Western societies. Some ten years later scientists worldwide would find themselves persecuted, or even put to death in the backlash to the French Revolution of 1789, itself the culmination of enlightenment thinking. Joseph Priestley, member of the Lunar Society and discoverer of oxygen would flee Britain after his laboratory in Birmingham was smashed and his house burned down in the Birmingham riots of 1791, by a mob objecting to his outspoken support for the French Revolution; and his colleague Lavoisier in France would be executed at the guillotine. The politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), tied natural philosophers, and specifically Priestley, to the French Revolution, writing that radicals who supported science in Britain "considered man in their experiments no more than they do mice in an air pump". In the light of this comment, Wright's painting of the bird in the air pump, completed over twenty years earlier, seems particularly prescient.
It was against this background that Charles Darwin, grandson of the Derby man and lunar society member, Erasmus, would re-awaken the conflict between science and religious belief once again half a century later, with the publication of his book The Origin of Species in 1859.
Because of this web of connections related to science, and the tensions it created which were so subtly illustrated by the art of the painter Joseph Wright of Derby; Derby Museum and Art Gallery, far from being just a collection of fine paintings as the casual visitor might imagine, is significant for being in a place that some would see as having a very significant role in the birth of modern science and industry worldwide. Birmingham, with its science and industry, has been described as the 'silicon valley' of the eighteenth century [4].
Erasmus Darwin has only a small display. Herbert Spencer, friend of Charles Darwin, and originator of the phase "the survival of the fittest", who was born in Derby, and has been described as the founder of sociology [5] does not appear to be mentioned at all.
[edit] Meetings
Anyone can join the 'Friends of the Derby Museum and Art Gallery', which holds regular meetings on various topics and collects money to fund projects. Details and a list of events appears on the official website [6].
Temporary exhibitions are also held.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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