"Joseph Wright painted some of the most powerful works of eighteenth-century British art: blacksmiths hammering a glowing bar of iron, dramatic demonstrations on scientific apparatus, erupting volcanoes, gloomy prisons, a fashionably dressed gentleman reclining full-length in a forest. Stephen Daniels addresses this interesting diversity by looking closely at the inextricable links between Wright's art and the different worlds of the Enlightenment movement that so fascinated and inspired him.

Wright's unique connection with the innovations of his age, together with his interest in new techniques and his use of an unusually wide range of pictorial and written sources, single him out as one of the most original and enterprising artists of his time."--BOOK JACKET.