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Lot Essay
All Wright’s Romantic genius for the play of light and shadow is displayed in A grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, with the figure of Julia. Executed after his return from his Grand Tour, the painting epitomizes the fashionable concept of the Sublime, with the tragic figure dwarfed by the craggy folds of the cave.
Wright set sail for Italy in November 1773 with his pregnant wife, Hannah; his pupil, Richard Hurleston and the artist John Downman. The party reached Nice in December and went on to Genoa and Leghorn, before travelling to Rome in February 1774. It was Wright’s visit to Naples from Rome, between October and November 1774, however, that had arguably the greatest impact on the artist during his Italian sojourn. He left Rome in June 1775, journeying via Florence, Bologna, Venice, Parma and Turin, before finally arriving back in Derby in September that year. Very few of Wright’s Italian subjects were actually painted in Italy. Most of his paintings were worked up when he returned to England from drawings or gouache sketches he made on the spot, and later developed from a variety of other visual and literary sources, for exhibition and sale.
The drawing that forms the basis for the present painting was executed on the Gulf of Salerno in 1774 during Wright’s Neapolitan stay, one of two carefully observed plein air sketches of caves along the coast (fig. 1; National Trust for Scotland, The Georgian House). It is clear from the minutely detailed drawings that these caverns spoke to Wright’s Romantic sensibilities, and the artist went on to use them as the basis for a number of different paintings. The first of these were executed whilst he was still in Italy and are simple oil reworkings of the drawings (these are now held in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA). On Wright's return to England, the drawings became the basis for a number of large oils incorporating dramatic narrative elements. One of the most ambitious of these to take Julia as its subject was exhibited in Covent Garden in 1797. Sadly, this is now lost, but Wright’s description of it as ‘a dark cavern, faintly illuminated with a large glowing coloured moon…the figure of Julia sits on a rock in the foreground her head down to her knees’, clearly indicates that the present work related directly to this composition.
A second pair of works for which Wright employed his Salerno drawings were exhibited in 1778 and 1780. The first of these was entitled A Grotto by the sea-side in the Kingdom of Naples, with Banditti: a Sun-set (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and the second, A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, with the Figure of Julia (private collection). In this version, Julia is bathed not in the golden light of the moon but in silvery morning light, and she throws her hands up in an anguished gesture.
Though Antiquity offers a number of different Julias who could be the subject of Wright’s painting, academic consensus is that she is Julia, the only legitimate child of the Emperor Augustus, who lived much of her life as a pawn in her father's dynastic plans. She was first married to her cousin, Marcellus, the son of her father's sister, Octavia. After his early death, Augustus organized her union with his general, Agrippa, some twenty-five years her senior. Histories at this point start to mention her infidelities, first with a nobleman named Sempronius Gracchus, and then with Augustus' stepson, her stepbrother, Tiberius. On Agrippa’s death, Augustus believed that it suited his purpose to marry daughter and step-son, making Julia mother and legally the sister of two of his heirs, Lucius and Gaius, and wife of another by 11 BC. Despite her seemingly secure position, Julia was arrested in 2 BC for adultery and treason; her father sent her a letter in Tiberius’ name declaring their marriage void, and he also accused her publicly of plotting against his own life. Several of Julia's supposed lovers were exiled, and Iullus Antonius, son of Mark Antony, was forced to commit suicide. Unwilling to execute his own daughter, Augustus sent Julia into exile on the island of Pandataria, modern-day Ventotene, off the coast of Lazio. It is this tragic chapter in her life, outcast and alone that Wright chose to depict.
Wright set sail for Italy in November 1773 with his pregnant wife, Hannah; his pupil, Richard Hurleston and the artist John Downman. The party reached Nice in December and went on to Genoa and Leghorn, before travelling to Rome in February 1774. It was Wright’s visit to Naples from Rome, between October and November 1774, however, that had arguably the greatest impact on the artist during his Italian sojourn. He left Rome in June 1775, journeying via Florence, Bologna, Venice, Parma and Turin, before finally arriving back in Derby in September that year. Very few of Wright’s Italian subjects were actually painted in Italy. Most of his paintings were worked up when he returned to England from drawings or gouache sketches he made on the spot, and later developed from a variety of other visual and literary sources, for exhibition and sale.
The drawing that forms the basis for the present painting was executed on the Gulf of Salerno in 1774 during Wright’s Neapolitan stay, one of two carefully observed plein air sketches of caves along the coast (fig. 1; National Trust for Scotland, The Georgian House). It is clear from the minutely detailed drawings that these caverns spoke to Wright’s Romantic sensibilities, and the artist went on to use them as the basis for a number of different paintings. The first of these were executed whilst he was still in Italy and are simple oil reworkings of the drawings (these are now held in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA). On Wright's return to England, the drawings became the basis for a number of large oils incorporating dramatic narrative elements. One of the most ambitious of these to take Julia as its subject was exhibited in Covent Garden in 1797. Sadly, this is now lost, but Wright’s description of it as ‘a dark cavern, faintly illuminated with a large glowing coloured moon…the figure of Julia sits on a rock in the foreground her head down to her knees’, clearly indicates that the present work related directly to this composition.
A second pair of works for which Wright employed his Salerno drawings were exhibited in 1778 and 1780. The first of these was entitled A Grotto by the sea-side in the Kingdom of Naples, with Banditti: a Sun-set (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and the second, A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, with the Figure of Julia (private collection). In this version, Julia is bathed not in the golden light of the moon but in silvery morning light, and she throws her hands up in an anguished gesture.
Though Antiquity offers a number of different Julias who could be the subject of Wright’s painting, academic consensus is that she is Julia, the only legitimate child of the Emperor Augustus, who lived much of her life as a pawn in her father's dynastic plans. She was first married to her cousin, Marcellus, the son of her father's sister, Octavia. After his early death, Augustus organized her union with his general, Agrippa, some twenty-five years her senior. Histories at this point start to mention her infidelities, first with a nobleman named Sempronius Gracchus, and then with Augustus' stepson, her stepbrother, Tiberius. On Agrippa’s death, Augustus believed that it suited his purpose to marry daughter and step-son, making Julia mother and legally the sister of two of his heirs, Lucius and Gaius, and wife of another by 11 BC. Despite her seemingly secure position, Julia was arrested in 2 BC for adultery and treason; her father sent her a letter in Tiberius’ name declaring their marriage void, and he also accused her publicly of plotting against his own life. Several of Julia's supposed lovers were exiled, and Iullus Antonius, son of Mark Antony, was forced to commit suicide. Unwilling to execute his own daughter, Augustus sent Julia into exile on the island of Pandataria, modern-day Ventotene, off the coast of Lazio. It is this tragic chapter in her life, outcast and alone that Wright chose to depict.