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AN INCIVILISED COMMENT.....

There have been very few occasions when I have genuinely been awestruck . Seeing the interior of St. Paul`s and Winchester Cathedrals are two examples but the world of the visual arts provided another.

A few years ago, on an impulsive Sunday morning, my eldest son, David and I visitied the National Gallery in London for the first time. It`s a wondeful place - all the usual suspects are there to be seen, the great and the good throughout the history of visual art. But however long you might reel off the familiar names, it`s a matter of some doubt that you will utter the name of Joseph Wright of Derby.

Now, the National Gallery has countless `rooms` and on a Sunday morning they all tend to be well populated, people going round them in an orderly fashion, seldom forming what you might call a crowd around any particular exhibit. Until, that it, you come to `An Experiment on a bird in the Air Pump.` On the Sunday morning of our visit, we went into the room and there were the people crowded round this quite stunning work. It is Joseph Wright`s crowning masterpiece - and it`s huge, 183 x 244cm - and it shows a travelling scientist demonstrating the formation of a vacuum by the withdrawal of air from a flask containing a white cockatoo.

The point of the painting is not so much to demontrate the science but more to show the human emotion which the experiment brings to the onlookers. The little girl is worried whether the bird will die - Wright leaves the question unanswered; the young lovers on the left seem only to be concerned about themselves. The painting also demonstrates Wright`s mastery of light - the whole scene is lit by the one candle on the table. There is so much to admire, so much to contemplate - small wonder the Sunday morning crowd were as much in awe as I was.

Years ago, the BBC produced a groundbreaking series by the then Sir Kenneth (later Lord) Clark - `Civilisation` which tracked the growth of civilisation as seen through the arts, music and architecture of the ages. In it he dismisses Wright as `a mediocrity.` If the visual arts are about anything, they are about lifting the spirit, which Wright`s painting surely did on that Sunday morning. Much as I admired Lord Clark`s intellect, I fear he has misjudged one of the finest artists of the 18th century by his uncivilised comment.

More information can be found at http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng725)