Читать книгу The Life and Works of Joseph Wright, A.R.A, commonly called "Wright of Derby" - William Bemrose - Страница 13
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CATALOGUE.
N. B. Such pictures as are marked with an asterisk (*) are to be disposed of.
No. I.
The Lady in Milton’s Comus, verse 221.
Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
No. II. *
A Companion to the preceding picture. The Widow of an Indian Chief watching the arms of her deceased husband.
This picture is founded on a custom which prevails among some of the savage tribes in America, where the widow of an eminent warrior is used to sit the whole day, during the first moon after his death, under a rude kind of trophy, formed by a tree lopped and painted; on which the weapons and martial habiliments of the dead are suspended. She remains in this situation without shelter, and perseveres in her mournful duty at the hazard of her own life from the inclemencies of weather.
No. III. *
William and Margaret. From the celebrated ballad in Pierce’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. 3. xvi.
’Twas at the silent solemn hour
When night and morning meet,
In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost,
And stood at William’s feet.
No. IV. *
View of the Cascade of Turni in Italy.
No. V.
Virgil’s Tomb by moonlight.
No. VI.
The Lake of Nemi. A sunset.
No. VII. *
Julia, the daughter of Augustus, and supposed mistress of Ovid, deploring her exile, by moonlight, in a cavern of the island to which she was banished.
No. VIII. *
The happy meeting of Hero and Leander, after his swimming across the Hellespont in a tranquil night.
No. IX. *
A Companion to the preceding picture. The Storm in which Leander was drowned.
No. X.
A Landscape. Morning.
No. XI.
A Sea Shore. Evening.
No. XII.
Matlock High Tor. Moonlight.
No. XIII.
The Maid of Corinth. From Mr. Hayley’s essay on painting, verse 126, &c.
O, Love! it was thy glory to impart
Its infant being to this magic art;
Inspir’d by thee, the soft Corinthian maid
Her graceful lover’s sleeping form portray’d;
Her boading heart his near departure knew,
Yet long’d to keep his image in her view;
Pleas’d she beheld the steady shadow fall
By the clear lamp upon the even wall;
The line she trac’d with fond precision true,
And drawing, doated on the form she drew.
No. XIV. *
A Companion to the preceding picture. Penelope unravelling her web, by lamp-light. From Pope’s Homer, the second book of the Odyssey, verse 99, &c.
Elusive of the bridal day, she gives
Fond hopes to all, and all with hopes deceives.
Did not the sun thro’ heaven’s wide azure roll’d
For three long years the royal fraud behold,
While she, laborious in delusion, spread
The spacious loom, and mix’d the various thread?
Where, as to life, the wondrous figures rise.
Thus spoke the inventive queen, with artful sighs:
“Tho’ cold in death Ulysses breathes no more,
“Cease yet awhile to urge the bridal hour;
“Cease, till to great Laertes I bequeath
“A talk of grief, his ornaments of death;
“Lest when the Fates his royal ashes claim,
“The Grecian matrons taint my spotless name,
“When he, whom living mighty realms obey’d,
“Shall want in death, a shroud to grace his shade.”
Thus she: at once the generous train complies,
Nor fraud mistrusts in virtue’s fair disguise:
The work she ply’d; but, studious of delay,
By night revers’d the labours of the day;
While thrice the sun his annual journey made,
The conscious lamp the midnight fraud survey’d.
No. XV.
A distant View of Vesuvius from the shore of Posilipo.
No. XVI. *
The Companion, in the gulf of Salerno.
No. XVII. *
A Landscape. Moonlight.
No XVIII.
A View in Dovedale. Morning.
No. XIX.
Ditto, its Companion. Evening.
No. XX.
Portrait of an Artist.
No. XXI. *
Guy de Lusignan in Prison.
No. XXII.
Portraits of three (of Mr. Newton’s) Children.
No. XXIII.
A Wood Scene. Moonlight.
No. XXIV. *
A View of Gibraltar during the destruction of the Spanish Floating Batteries, on the 13th of September, 1782.
It may be proper to inform the spectator, that the painter’s original plan was to execute two pictures, as companions to each other, on this event so glorious to our country. In the first (which is now exhibited) he has endeavoured to represent an extensive view of the scenery combined with the action. In the second (which he hopes to finish hereafter) he proposes to make the action his principal object, and delineate the particulars of it more distinctly.
No. XXV.
Portrait of a Gentleman.
FINIS.
