Joseph Wright of Derby A.R.A.
Maria, from Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey’, Painted circa 1772
Oil on canvas
39½ x 49½ in. (100.3 x 125.7 cm.)
Copyright: The Weiss Gallery, London
The subject of this painting, a variant of a signed and dated version now in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, is taken from Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, first published in 1768 - the same year the author sadly died; prior to his death he lived not far from here at 41 Old Bond Street.
Provenance
(Probably) Anonymous sale; Christie’s, 27 April 1793, lot 74 (as ‘Maria from Sterne’, its pendant, ‘The Captive King from Sterne’, lot 75);
(Probably) Anonymous sale; unknown auction house at 25 Conduit Street, London, 24 March 1809, lot 50 (as ‘Maria, from Sterne’);
Henry A. Rannie (1828 - 1904), 11 Nelson Terrace, Hillhead, Glasgow;
Christie’s, London, 12 March 1898, lot 64 (as ‘A. Kauffman (Style of) - A Lady with a Dog, seated in a landscape’), 11 gns; bt. by Frick
(Possibly) Henry Clay Frick (1849 - 1919), London;
Private collection, United Kingdom.
A Sentimental Journey is considered to be an epilogue to Sterne’s extremely successful The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Its narrator, Yorick, visits Maria - a character from the earlier novel - in Moulins. The reader learns that Maria has been struck with grief upon learning of her lover’s departure:
“When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar – she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand – a small brook ran at the foot of the tree…”
In the novel, Maria’s pitiable condition has such a profound effect on Yorick, who feels ‘such unbearable emotion’ that he declares ‘I am positive I have a soul’.
The subject of the melancholic Maria became popular with late eighteenth century British artists and was also portrayed by Angelica Kauffman, Daniel Gardner, and John Russell - to name a few.
Born in Derby in 1734, Joseph Wright became an internationally renowned artist. Famed as a painter of dramatic light, and for his association with key members of the Enlightenment, he is now considered to be one of Britain’s most interesting and wide-ranging painters. Amongst other accolades, he has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution”, partly coined on account of his genius in manipulating artificial light within his dramatic portraits of scientists at work.
“When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar – she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand – a small brook ran at the foot of the tree…”
In the novel, Maria’s pitiable condition has such a profound effect on Yorick, who feels ‘such unbearable emotion’ that he declares ‘I am positive I have a soul’.
The subject of the melancholic Maria became popular with late eighteenth century British artists and was also portrayed by Angelica Kauffman, Daniel Gardner, and John Russell - to name a few.
Born in Derby in 1734, Joseph Wright became an internationally renowned artist. Famed as a painter of dramatic light, and for his association with key members of the Enlightenment, he is now considered to be one of Britain’s most interesting and wide-ranging painters. Amongst other accolades, he has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution”, partly coined on account of his genius in manipulating artificial light within his dramatic portraits of scientists at work.