Word: painterly
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...neither Gainsborough's grace nor Reynolds' robust authority. Yet as much as any painter of his time, Joseph Wright of Derby captured the peculiar spirit of 18th century England. On the one hand, there was the century's sense of discovery and pride in scientific investigation, which resulted in a wealth of tools and inventions and, in due course, the Industrial Revolution. On the other, there was its almost mystic appreciation of nature. A rare exhibition of Wright's paintings, drawn entirely from the Paul Mellon Collection and currently on display at Washington's National...
...provincial painter with the good sense to remain one. Born in the small Midlands city of Derby in 1734, he remained there most of his life. But Derby, near the manufacturing towns of Birmingham and Sheffield, was an early center of industrialization, with an excitement all its own. Even as a child, Wright was fascinated by things mechanical. He made models of machines, clocks and guns, a tiny spinning wheel and a toy peep show. James Watt, the perfecter of the steam engine, John Wilkinson, the iron manufacturer who developed the cast-iron bridge, Sir Richard Arkwright, the wealthy cotton...
...hardheaded industrialists of the Midlands provided Wright with a ready-made clientele. For his part, he found fascinating the scenes that more aristocratic painters scorned-a group of experimenters around an early air pump, the drama that the glaring light of a forge gives to blacksmith and bystanders. Light was an apt symbol for an age of enlightenment. Painter James Northcote, a contemporary, called Wright "the most famous painter now living for candlelights"-not to mention firelight and moonlight, which Wright often played off in the same picture, as he did in The Blacksmith's Shop...
...good example is Boston's Dana Chandler Jr., a product of the tough Roxbury ghetto. At 28 he is a painter whom few in Boston can ignore, since his huge, bright Black Power murals glare from the sides of buildings that people pass by every day. Chandler's avowed intent is to "create a black museum in the inner city." His scorn for the white art world is complete. "Frank Stella? So much crap! It's decorative and costs lots of money and doesn't say anything. Earthworks? What the hell does it mean to black...
...Builder. Winston A. Burnett has illustrated what a Negro manager can do when he finds enough capital to expand. Harlem's Burnett, now plump and 45, learned about construction from the bottom up by working as a painter, plasterer and carpenter in his youth. Later he built one of Harlem's larger contracting firms, Winston A. Burnett Construction Co.; it had a yearly volume of $1,000,000. Despite his experience and his sound business practices-he continually reinvested all profits in the company-Burnett could not get the bank loans, and especially the performance bonds, needed...