Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Joseph Wright
British (English); 18th-century
London, England: Kenwood House
46%
Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight. c1770. Oil on canvas
18th-century English painting, at its worst, is an art of misapprehension and unearned pleasures. In a word, it's mannered. Wright cribbed his whole playbook from Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, especially the Dutchmen among them like van Honthorst. In this painting there's all of those artists' sensitivity for tone and contour, and all of their capacity for deft arrangement. And obviously, there's their chiaroscuro. But there's no real drama that results from this, no wrestling with the background (whose pure blackness allows the girls to float softly atop it) or groping towards the front of the image (the whole tableau is set well behind the picture plane, and held off from it by a caul of dark paint). Tenebrism, at its best in earlier painting, was a means towards the end of showing things creak into pained existence; here Wright's shadowplay seems to be about little more than startling, but ultimately easy effects. The difference is in the left girl's smile, accented by the crescent of light traversing her chin. (TFS, 2025)