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take up my pencil', he wrote in 1783.¹³ This condition recurred,
and we might suppose that it had a deleterious effect on his
production as an artist, to the extent that he retreated into his
Italian subjects not just to make money from their sale but to
provide certainty and a measure of consolation. Wright's Italian
trip contributed other subjects to his repertoire, including Lake
Nemi, Lake Albano and the Girandola, the annual firework dis-
play at the Castel di Sant'Angelo in Rome. His View of Catania,
with Mount Etna has a limpid calm that the Vesuvius subjects
characteristically lack, and may have been intended as a pendant
for an erupting Vesuvius.¹4
While his paintings of Lake Nemi and Catania evoked calm
and stability, feelings of anger, uncertainty and lack of confi-
dence could all be sublimated by a colourful, violent eruption.
The earliest of Wright's big eruption canvases, Eruption of
Vesuvius, seen from Portici , William Hamilton's villa, may have been
started when he returned from Naples to Rome in November
Joseph Wright of Derby,
View of Catania , with
Mount Etna , c. 1775,
oil on canvas.
Image not available - no digital rights
 
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