The National Gallery of London is hosting the first major exhibition of 18th-century painter Joseph Wright, whose works captured the moral dilemma of scientific progress at the dawn of the industrial age.
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows features more than 20 works, including An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, which — in depicting an early scientist observing the suffocation of a bird — was heralded as a celebration of invention and daring.
But Wright’s anxieties are intensely modern, The Financial Times wrote: In leaving open the question of whether the bird will die, and “delineating the differing reactions, from fascinated horror to indifference,” Wright prophesies debates “that would stalk science in society from then until the present day.”