How you can use this image

This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).

Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.

The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.

Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.

Notes

Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.

An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a vacuum. Will the lecturer expel the air completely and kill the bird, or allow the air back in and revive it? Wright focuses on the viewers‘ differing reactions – from the girl unable to watch to the lovers with eyes only for each other.

This is the largest, most ambitious and dramatic of the series of ’candlelight' pictures Wright painted during the 1760s. It captures the drama of a staged scientific experiment but it also functions as a vanitas – a painting concerning the passing of time, the limits of human knowledge and the frailty of life itself.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Date

1768

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 183 x W 244 cm

Accession number

NG725

Acquisition method

Presented by Edward Tyrrell, 1863

Work type

Painting

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

This venue is open to the public. Not all artworks are on display. If you want to see a particular artwork, please contact the venue.

View venue

Artist or maker

Joseph Wright of Derby

1734–1797

View profile

Snowdon by Moonlight Victoria Gallery & Museum
Portrait of a Girl (Jane Monck, d.1794) Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries
Charles Goore (1701–1783) Victoria Gallery & Museum
Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) English Heritage, Down House
Anna Ashton (Later Mrs Thomas Case) Victoria Gallery & Museum
Samuel Oldknow (1756–1828) Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries
Reverend Thomas Seward (1708–1790), MA English Heritage, Down House
189 more