A modest pencil drawing of the wreathed head of the god Silenus will go on pubic display for the first time in Derby this week. The drawing is the earliest known work by the city’s most famous son, Joseph Wright of Derby—made in 1745, when he was just 11 years old.
Recently rediscovered in a private family collection, the drawing shows the boy struggling to learn his craft, six years before his formal art education began when he entered the London studio of Thomas Hudson. He would go on to become internationally famous for scenes of figures in inky darkness picked out by flames from a blacksmith’s forge, candle lit scientific experiments or erupting volcanoes.
A major exhibition will open at the National Gallery in London in Autumn and travel on to Derby next year. However, Life on Paper, the exhibition at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, concentrates on more intimate and personal works, drawings, letters and sketches. This includes a page of tender drawings of Wright’s baby daughter, born in 1774 during his honeymoon in Italy, and his self portrait at the age of 40, which the museum managed to acquire after a public appeal in 2022.
The head of Silenus is proudly inscribed “Jos Wright 11 Years”, and may have been copied from a print in a book from his father’s library—or, curator Lucy Bamford thinks, possibly from an inn sign in the city.
- Joseph Wright of Derby: Life on Paper, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, 23 May 23-7 September 2025
