A groundbreaking exhibition at the National Gallery in London is challenging conventional wisdom about when modern art truly began. While most art historians point to 19th-century masterpieces as the starting point of modern art, a new display suggests that Joseph Wright of Derby's "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" from 1768 may actually mark the real beginning of the modern art movement, nearly a century earlier than previously thought.
The question of what constitutes "modern art" has puzzled critics and art historians for decades without reaching any consensus. Many experts traditionally point to the 1800s and iconic works such as Édouard Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" (1863), JMW Turner's "Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway" (1844), and Francisco Goya's "The Third of May 1808" (1814). Art critic Robert Hughes famously described Goya as "the first modern artist and the last old master."
However, Wright's 1768 painting presents a compelling case for being decades ahead of its time. The work depicts a dramatic science experiment where oxygen is being pumped out of a glass vessel containing a white cockatoo. Spectators, shrouded in peripheral darkness, are transfixed by the life-or-death drama unfolding before their eyes. Wright masterfully orchestrated his scene as a chain reaction, with a pivotal event at the center sending shockwaves of emotion through the observers.
At the heart of the composition stands a scientist with one hand on the valve that controls air flow in and out of the glass container, while an air pump sits prominently on the table. The spectators react to the suffocating bird in distinctly different ways, creating a complex emotional landscape. On the left, a young couple appears more interested in each other than the scientific demonstration. On the right, two young girls react with horror at what they perceive as animal cruelty. The men closest to the viewer seem better able to control their emotional responses. In the background, a young boy lowers a curtain to block out moonlight, while the scene's other light source – a lantern hidden behind a jar containing a human skull – adds an ominous undertone.
According to exhibition curator Christine Riding, Wright's innovation stemmed from the competitive London art world of his era. "He was entrepreneurial and came up with a signature style," Riding explains. "And I don't think anyone dared do the same because he was so good at it – it became his USP." This entrepreneurial spirit led Wright to develop his distinctive Caravaggio-like handling of light and dark, which became his artistic trademark.
What makes Wright's work particularly "modern" is his revolutionary remixing of art historical tradition. He took familiar poses and lighting techniques from classical art and repurposed them for contemporary scenes. This approach would later be declared a defining feature of modern painting by French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire in his 1863 essay "The Painter of Modern Life." Baudelaire argued that modern art should blend the "ephemeral" changeability of the modern world with the solid, "eternal" qualities of great art from the past.
Manet exemplified this approach in "Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe," which depicted a modern-day picnic using figures based on Raphael's Renaissance artwork "The Judgment of Paris" (1510-20). However, Wright was employing this technique nearly 100 years earlier. In "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump," Wright riffs on canonical scenes depicting religious miracles, with striking similarities to Caravaggio's "Supper at Emmaus" (1601), which is also displayed at the National Gallery.
The second ingredient of Wright's modernity lies in his representation of societal modernizations. While this breakthrough is normally credited to pioneering 19th-century artists like Turner, Wright was actually addressing contemporary scientific and technological progress much earlier. Riding believes Wright's innovation was inspired by changing exhibition opportunities for British artists at the time. Before the creation of the Royal Academy, artists could choose from several competing display venues, including the Society of Artists of Great Britain, where Wright's air pump painting was first shown publicly.
"The Society of Artists encouraged arts, science, and manufacture," Riding notes. "This was a world that didn't tend to separate art and science, they tended to be seen as one and the same thing." Wright cleverly exploited this new art scene and its encouragement of cross-disciplinary thinking, inspiring him to make science itself the subject of art.
This artistic choice mirrored broader changes occurring in 18th-century society, particularly the Industrial Revolution, which was just beginning to gain momentum in Great Britain. The revolution's epicenter was the Midlands, Wright's birthplace, and he was astute enough to recognize and record this spirit of modernization for posterity. Wright even knew prominent figures of this transformative era, including members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which met to discuss scientific and industrial innovation, and Richard Arkwright, a leading entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution.
Contemporary critics recognized that Wright's approach was significantly different from his artistic peers. When the painting was first displayed, the Gazetteer called the artist "a very great and uncommon genius in a peculiar way." While modern readers might raise an eyebrow at the word "peculiar," in the 18th century it was meant to express extraordinariness and uniqueness.
However, Wright's painting technique itself was not necessarily revolutionary. His Caravaggio-like style remained firmly rooted in 17th-century traditions, much like the air pump technology itself. This represents a key difference from other artworks claimed as "modern" in the 19th century. Turner's "Rain, Steam, and Speed" similarly depicted technological progress and its societal impact, but importantly, it also introduced brilliantly innovative ways of depicting light, depth, smoke, steam, and motion in oil paint.
This surrender of realism in exchange for expressionism and abstraction is often claimed as a key feature of modern art, later innovated even further by artists such as Hilma af Klint and Kandinsky, and many others throughout the 20th century and beyond. Wright's work, while groundbreaking in subject matter and concept, maintained traditional realistic painting techniques.
Ultimately, according to Riding, it was Wright's "questioning, doubt and scepticism" that represents the most critical aspect of his modernity. "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" lacks a simple, uplifting moral message. In the composition, the central figure's left hand is poised to either open or seal the valve on the glass container, while his right hand gestures outward to the viewer, as if asking for our opinion about the choice between life and death.
This remains a strikingly contemporary dilemma: how to handle the terrible powers unleashed by science and technology. The painting concedes that knowledge gained from human progress can be used for both good and evil. This theme is commonly associated with Francisco Goya, particularly in "The Disasters of War" (1810-1814), his series of etchings about the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. These images are often described as a turning point in art history – the first time an artist revealed humanity's inner darkness with unflinching directness while offering disquieting skepticism about human progress.
During the Enlightenment period (roughly 1680-1820), there was widespread hope that scientific reason, democracy, and the rule of law would revolutionize and improve society. Goya's art seems to be a solemn and pessimistic rebuttal of this optimism. However, Wright's painting provides an earlier expression of the same concern, visible in the fearful expression on the young girl's face and the icily fretful look of the white-haired man in silhouette.
While these details and broader context might make us reconsider "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump," the question remains whether we can truly claim it as the first work of modern art. Although seemingly quite different from avant-garde art of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is undoubtedly an important early attempt to respond to a modernizing world. The painting paid homage to tradition while depicting contemporary life, engaged directly with modern issues, reflected wider societal changes, and conveyed skepticism about progress – all characteristics that would become essential to the next century's "modern" art movement.
Whether Wright's work represents a true tipping point in art history remains contentious among scholars. He was neither a diehard traditionalist nor a fully-fledged modernist, but rather sits precisely on the cusp of art's transformation from being a vehicle of tradition to becoming an arena for the shocks of the new. The exhibition "Wright of Derby: From the Shadows" runs at The National Gallery in London until May 10, 2026, giving visitors the opportunity to judge for themselves whether this remarkable 1768 painting deserves recognition as the true birth of modern art.
