BOY BLOWING A BLADDER.
On one occasion, Wright was vexed with a sitter so capricious and unreasonable, that his patience and ingenuity were sorely taxed. She came to her second sitting in a different dress to that she had worn at the first, and desired the painter to represent her as she then appeared. Wright altered the picture to suit her whim. To his surprise and annoyance, when she next made her appearance, it was in a third dress. Again the pliant artist obliged her. When, however, she appeared in a fourth dress, Wright could stand it no longer, and flatly refused to make any further alteration. The lady replied in a threat to leave the portrait on his hands. “Madam,” retorted the painter, “I do not wish you to have the painting, I shall put it into the first auction sale, and it will fetch more than I was about to charge you.” This had the desired result; the picture was taken, but the drapery was painted over by another artist, named Barber, to suit the caprice of the lady.
A lady who was about to sit to Mr. Wright, was told by her friends that Mr. Wright would arrange her hair, &c. She, to enable him to carry this into effect, spread out upon the table a large assortment of brushes, combs, pomades, bandoline, &c., much to the astonishment and amusement of the artist.
A sitter, a lady, who, though possessed of a fine figure, and good arms and ankles, had but an indifferent face, puzzled Mr. Wright as to the position in which he should place her. After some thought he chose to paint her extending her beautiful bare arm towards a branch of a hawthorn tree. Showing only sufficient of the lady’s face to be recognisable, he brought the full contour of her handsome figure into view, with one pretty foot and ankle peeping out from under her dress, and thus produced what was at once a good portrait and pleasing picture.
From the foregoing description, it is most probable that the following advertisement which appeared in the “Times” newspaper of July 25th, 1871, refers to the same picture, and that Mrs. Woodville was the sitter.
TO PICTURE DEALERS & OTHERS.
FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.
The above reward will be paid for the Portrait in Oil of the late Mrs. Woodville, by Wright, of Derby. The size is about 7 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6 inches. She is attired in white, and represented as climbing up a bank to gather hawthorne. Her feet and ankles are displayed, and her shoes ornamented with garnet buckles. The picture is believed never to have been framed, and from being constantly rolled up to be considerably cracked.
—Apply to Messrs. SIMPSON & NORTH,
Solicitors, 1, Rumford Street,
Liverpool.
Upon further enquiry I find that Major Orred, of Tranmere and Weston, Cheshire, caused the reward to be offered, and succeeded in finding the portrait at a Chemist’s, in Liverpool, but it was unfortunately mutilated by being cut down from whole length to “Kit-cat.”
In “Mozley’s Reminiscences,” p. 65, the following allusion is made to Wright:—
“There are men who are interesting from their associations, but whom no associations can redeem. Such was Joseph Pickford. I first became acquainted with his figure and circumstances at Derby, in 1815. His father had been an architect and builder, and the intimate friend of Wright the painter, remarkable for his illustrations of the varieties of light and their effects; and also of Whitehurst, a mechanician and author of a ‘Theory of the Earth.’ It was a coterie contemporaneous and on friendly terms with the Philosophical Society, founded by Erasmus Darwin, but with a different caste, for philosophers are, socially, as exclusive as other people. The father had built in the Friar Gate a house of some architectural pretensions, his chef-d’œuvre, people said. The sons had divided it. He occupied the smaller portion, entered by a side door, much as it had come from the builder’s hands. The only pretty thing in his sitting room was a charming picture by Wright, of Pickford and his brother playing with a spaniel, of the date 1775, I should think, and in the gay costume of that period. It passed into the hands of a branch of the Curzon family. When I called on Pickford it was a caution to see what a beautiful child might come to.”
Woodward (G. W.), the Caricaturist (himself a Derbyshire man), says in his “Eccentric Excursions,” “It would be unpardonable to leave Derby without noticing the celebrated artist, Mr. Wright, who has resided several years in a house[27] facing the New Inn, overgrown with ivy, which, together with its high walls, proclaims an habitation sacred to study and retirement. The result of his labours are always open to the inspection of the stranger, an indulgence characteristic of this gentleman’s well-known affability; and those who depart unpleased after viewing his Moon and Candle-light pieces, and other inimitable specimens of his pencil, must indeed be void of taste and judgment in the imitative arts.”