Cottage on Fire at Night

Joseph Wright of Derby was fascinated by contrasting light effects and made a name for himself painting genre scenes dramatically lit by lamplight. In the early 1770s, he also began to paint landscapes depicting Italian and British scenery. Wright married these two interests by transposing his candlelit aesthetic into open-air views. Cottage on Fire at Night reads as a study in different forms of illumination and their respective emotional effects. On the left, melancholic ruins are bathed in the soft rose glow of a full moon, evoking stillness and introspection; on the right, helpless bystanders watch as roaring flames and clouds of violet smoke consume their home in a scene of chaos and horror. Wright painted at least eight versions of this subject.