The Gulf of Salerno

1783/85

Joseph Wright of Derby
British, 1734-1797

On View: European Painting and Sculpture, Gallery 219

Artist: Joseph Wright of Derby
Title: The Gulf of Salerno
Origin: England
Date: 1783–1785
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed on original stretcher: Gulf of Salerno painted by Jos. Wright/exhibited 1785
Dimensions: 16 3/8 × 23 3/8 in. (41.6 × 59.4 cm)
Credit Line: L.L. and A.S. Coburn, Josephine and John I. Louis, Jr., and Alexander A. McKay Endowments; through prior acquisition of the Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Endowment
Reference Number: 2003.46

Anonymous review, “Exhibition of Pictures by Mr. Wright of Derby,” Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, April 20, 1785, p. 2.

Mr. Robin’s Rooms, Convent Garden, Exhibition of Paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1785, no. 16
Chicago, BUILDING A COLLECTION: NEW ACQUISITIONS AND PROMISED GIFTS OF BRITISH ART, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, May 1–August 1, 2004, no. 5.

Probably John Holland, Ford Hall, Derbyshire [a “Sun Set in the Bay of Salerno” listed in Wright’s Account Book about 1783 as the companion to Bacon’s Moonlight Vesuvius and “sold to my friend Holland”; see Judy Egerton, Wright of Derby, exhib. cat. Tate Gallery, Louvre, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990, p. 180, under no. 109]. Private collection, England, by family descent to a collector in New York, c. 1992 [information kindly supplied by Piers Davies, Christie’s]; sold Christie’s, New York, 24 January, 2003, no. 140 to Simon Dickinson, London; sold to the Art Institute.

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