Painting and Drawing Society Annual Meeting

The Painting and Drawing Society is having its annual meeting, where the group hears presentations from its board. Reservation details will be forthcoming. 

The group then hears from Dr. Douglas Fordham from the University of Virginia as he discusses Joseph Wright of Derby’s Enlightenment. In the 1760s, Joseph Wright of Derby produced two astonishing exhibition paintings that crossed the polite conventions of the conversation piece with the ambition and scale of history painting. 

The first of these paintings, A Philosopher Giving That Lecture on the Orrery, in Which a Lamp Is Put in the Place of the Sun, provides a fascinating glimpse into what intellectual historian Michael Sauter described as “the Spatial Reformation,” in which the division of heavens and earth came to be viewed within a single spatial regime. The second, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, includes a demonstration in which an elderly scientist holds the fate of a cockatoo in his fingertips. These two representations of Enlightenment knowledge were equally about the power of painting in an increasingly secular age. These are icons of Enlightenment, we might say, seeking to invest painting with a mystery and power previously reserved for religious subjects. Following the program, enjoy dinner with fellow members in the museum’s banquet room.