約瑟夫·懷特·德比，A.R.A.

T. M. O'Farrell, London;

By whom sold ('The Property of T. M. O'Farrell, Esq.'), London, Christie's, 22 March 1974, lot 115, reproduced pl. 34, bought in;

Roy Miles, London, by 1976 (probably acquired post sale from the above);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 22 June 1979, lot 163, for £5,500;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 July 1984, lot 94; 

With Alex Wengraf Ltd., London, from whom aquired by the present owner.

B. Nicholson, ‘Wright of Derby: addenda and corrigenda’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXX, October 1988, pp. 753-54, reproduced fig. 41.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Joseph Wright of Derby. View of Catania, Sicily, with Etna beyond. This painting has a strong, quite old stretcher, perhaps turn of the twentieth century, and a recent lining. The craquelure is very fine but complex, with many intricate circular patterns, some having small old retouchings. The canvas weave appears to have been quite fine and slanting, which is visible in slightly thinner areas such in the upper right sky, and it is the sky which has clearly had a more complicated past, while the lower landscape has been calmly and beautifully preserved overall. Under ultra violet light there are just a few recent retouchings, isolated in occasional touches across the sky, with one or two others, also fairly minor, in the distant hills. There has evidently been no accidental damage. More dimly visible are wider, older, warm strengthening surface retouches, presumably semi glazes, mainly on the left side and in the upper centre, with others also in the upper right sky where there may have been slight wear exposing the canvas weave. The original delicate play of light, with the sunset and Mount Etna behind, is clearly central to the vast sky in this painting, as is the quality of light in all Joseph Wright's Italian views, and it was undoubtedly exceptionally subtle here. The fine unworn detail in the architecture below has remained finely intact, and the discreet detail of the peasants and the foreground is also apparently well preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This spectacular landscape is the larger and more dramatic of two views of Etna by Joseph Wright of Derby. The other version, which is significantly smaller, is in the Tate Gallery, London (T01278). Wright travelled extensively in Italy in the mid 1770’s and was profoundly influenced by the landscape that he encountered. In particular he was captivated by the volcanos, caverns and grottos of the south, soaked as they were in the romance of classical antiquity. Alongside his early candlelit scenes of scientific experimentation and industrial progress, today his Italian landscapes are rightly celebrated as some of his greatest works.

Despite beginning his career as a portraitist, working briefly in Liverpool before attempting to fill the void left by Gainsborough's exodus from Bath, many of Wright's best loved works are landscape and genre scenes, especially those which deal in particularly dramatic effects of light. Wright's earliest known pure landscape is a picture entitled Rocks with Waterfall, painted in circa 1772 (Private Collection). It was not until he travelled to Italy however, that landscapes really start to feature prominently in his art, and it is this development that represents the most significant and lasting influence of Wright's experience on the continent. In Italy, away from the time constraints of portrait commissions, Wright was able to fully immerse himself in the study of topography and made more drawings than he had previously had time for. He sketched heavily throughout his travels, engrossed not only in the landscape of Italy, but the mythology of classical antiquity as well. The experience was a personal revelation, and following his return to England he seized every chance he had to paint landscapes; writing to a friend in 1792 'I know not how it is, tho' I am engaged in portraits... I find myself continually stealing off, and getting to Landscapes'.

In 1773 Wright had left England with his wife, his pupil Richard Hurlstone, and the artist John Downman, arriving in Nice in December, before travelling on to Genoa  and Leghorn. Continuing overland they arrived in Rome in February 1774, where Wright stayed for seven months studying the splendours of classical antiquity. Writing on 22 May 1774 he noted 'I have not time to enter into a particular detail of the fine things this country abounds with; let it suffice to tell you, at present, that the artist finds here whatever may facilitate and improve his studies'.¹ In the autumn he travelled on to Naples and the area around the gulf of Salerno, a popular destination for the cognoscenti of his generation, and over the course of more than a month visited Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Museum at Naples, as well as Virgil's tomb and the coastal grottos for which that region is famed. No record exists of Wright visiting Sicily, however, and the furthest south he is known to have travelled is Naples where he witnessed an eruption of Vesuvius in late 1774. This event profoundly affected him and paintings of Vesuvius would appear regularly in his work over the next two decades. Given his fascination with volcanos the appeal of Mount Etna as a subject seems obvious and though he had to rely on some other artist’s depiction of the scene for his topographical reference, he infuses the view with an extraordinary level of empathy for the spirit of such places. Whilst the mountain smokes placidly in the distance, bathed in the soft glow of evening light, the ravaged lava field in the foreground – like some ethereal moonscape – which overwhelms the two diminutive little contadini with their pack horse, stands as a reminded of the destructive power of nature to overwhelm human conceit.

Whilst the compositions of Wright’s two views of Catania are similar the crucial effects of light are very different. Both appear to be sunsets; however, whilst the Tate picture is bathed in a cool, crisp light which highlights the city in bright white, this picture is suffused with a warm late evening glow that bathes most of the architecture in shadow, highlighting only the central buildings with a soft pinkish radiance and twinkling off ridges in the middle distance. The result is a much more balance composition which blends the natural and the artificial in a unified colour tone and creates a sense of harmony between the town and the quietly smoking mountain beyond.

1. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800, New Haven and London 1997, p. 1024