Was Joseph Wright afraid of the dark?

a painter of contrasts, and a great, small exhibition at the National Gallery

What kind of knowledge do we get from looking at art? One of Joseph Wright of Derby’s paintings currently on display at the National Gallery, Three Persons Looking at the Gladiator by Candlelight (1765), shows just that, with the candle flame obscured by the man with his back to us and its glow lighting their faces as they lean into the marvellous spectacle it illuminates.

Caravaggio developed the painting technique where very bright highlights contrast with near total darkness. He tended to light his paintings from above, as if by divine spotlight. Wright, on the other hand, used artificial lighting from a low position, suggestive of the down-to-earth empiricism of science rather than the revealed knowledge of religion.

The painting’s theme is enlightenment, both in the figurative sense of the candle’s effect on the dark room, and in terms of the historical period associated with the supremacy of reason, which was accompanied by a taste for the art of the supposedly rational Greeks. Yet despite Wright’s enthusiasm for the progress of knowledge in his day, the painting does not offer anything like the cool detachment of scientific investigation.

Kant struggled to categorise the kind of enjoyment offered by looking at art, situating it in an awkwardly intermediary position between the gratification of sensual desire and the satisfaction we feel at moral goodness.

The painting is similarly ambivalent. The central figure has a glassy iris that puts one in mind of scientific instruments that employ lenses. This mechanical aspect contrasts with the suggestion of passion in his flushed cheeks, red lapels, and the intensity of his gaze, tipped admiringly upwards from a position beneath the sculpture, whose muscled torso must dominate his field of vision.

The man has his hand on the candleholder. He could be about to lift it to reveal other parts of the white body, but, as the tiny spots of still-wet fallen wax suggest, he is laying it down, having found the ideal spot for its light, which is that closest to his and his companion’s eyes.

The older man on the left has had his vision improved by spectacles, and the light glints on their frame as it does on some of the other mechanisms of vision, like the metal of the candleholder and the eyeball of the silhouetted man on the right.

Yet the view of the grey-haired man must be mostly of the sculpture’s shadowed back. Is that a metaphor for his age, also suggested in the way his proprietorial arms push the statue towards the younger men, as if passing along the torch for the next generation before he fades completely into the dark?

The third man, thought to be a self-portrait of the artist, is immediately juxtaposed with a drawing of the Gladiator, revealing a side of it which, in their statue, is cast into shadow.

To modern eyes, the drawing, clearly delineated and carefully shaded on a white background, is an altogether more detached and perhaps neutral representation of the sculpture. But the men are are turned away from it (and the old man’s failing eyes can’t see that far). That is, they are absorbed in the spectacle, rather than, perhaps, the fine print, of enlightenment.

They certainly cannot be moved by the aura of this particular sculpture, a modern reproduction of an ancient marble statue housed in Italy, which was itself an ancient copy of an even older bronze. But the effects of light on its surface and their metaphorical implications are enthralling.

The painting stages not just the effect of light but the conflict between darkness and light. The statue turns its head and raises its strong arm towards the dark emptiness of the room, as if in combat with it. The figure in the drawing joins the charge. Even the dim glow from the suspended ceiling lamp reflects softly on the gladiator’s head, setting it apart from its antagonist.

Lots of opposites. The men are solemn but informal. (I think the artist is sitting sideways on his chair.) The painting combines deep darkness with bright light. The men’s gazes are mechanical but full of desire. The statue is dazzling but obscure. It fights the darkness but, turning from their drawing, the men don’t want the fight to be over; they want to watch.

The Enlightenment, it is often said today, was not quite as rational as it liked to think. The West didn’t simply progress, it needed to make its progress visible through contrast with the Other. Is something of the kind what these men are doing here? That would mean, to respond to the initial question, that the kind of knowledge we get from looking at art is not the image we have of ourselves; but it is nonetheless the image we have of ourselves.

‘Wright of Derby: From the Shadows’ is at the National Gallery till 10 May.