Which artists will define our age?

It glows. The whole painting glows. Glows not just with the way the light from a fire unseen beyond the artist’s frame reflects in his glistening eyes; reflects in the moist redness of his almost girlish lips; reflects in the folds of his turban and silky grey sash. It glows too from an inner radiation, glows from his character.

We have in Britain some arcane tax legislation that can bring a harvest that’s anything but arcane. The recent acquisition of Joseph Wright of Derby’s ‘Self-Portrait at the Age of about Forty’ (c. 1772) has been made possible ‘in lieu of inheritance tax… under a hybrid arrangement and allocated to Derby Museums… with further support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund’. Private individuals like Robert M. Kirkland and other donors and foundations have helped too. The result is that the self-portrait of the great 18th-century artist of the Midlands industrial revolution has come home.