Self-Portrait at the Age of about Forty, and verso: A study for “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump”

The likeness, which is the only one of Wright’s 10 self-portraits in which he specifically depicts himself as an artist, shows the painter dressed in an exotic costume with a porte-crayon (a device for holding chalk or pastel) in his left hand. The play of light on the fabric of his clothes is a bravura display of his famous technique.  

The reverse side of the canvas shows a preparatory oil sketch for Wright’s most famous painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, which is now in the collection of the National Gallery, London. The date of the sketch would be no later than 1768, when the finished painting of Air Pump was shown at the annual exhibition of the Society of Artists. The dramatically lit scene is completely realised in the sketch for the painting, which is now regarded as a masterpiece from the Age of Enlightenment.  

The self-portrait, which is in its original elaborate frame (not shown), has been in private hands for its entire existence and has rarely been exhibited in public. It joins the world’s largest collection of Wright’s work at Derby Museums, via a hybrid acceptance-in-lieu offer, and is now on display at Derby Museum and Art Gallery in a specially constructed glass case that allows both sides of the canvas to be viewed.