Geoscience Reference
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includes the diminutive figures of Pliny the Elder and his com-
panions facing death, its subtitle, 'The Last Days of Pompeii', is
a mid-nineteenth-century addition following the publication
in 1834 of Edward Bulwer Lytton's successful novel.
Perhaps unconvincingly, Wright of Derby wove a volcano
subject into a painting in subsequent years. His
Widow of an
Indian Chief Watching the Arms of her Deceased Husband
(1785)
shows in the distance a fanciful American volcano smoking
and glowing while thunder and lightning rage beside it. The
mourning foreground figure is carrying out the custom imposed
on widows of Native American chiefs, to sit every day under a
totemic tree bearing his bow and arrows and tomahawk for the
full 28-day cycle of the first moon after the husband's death. As
Wright put it in the paragraph accompanying the painting's ex-
hibition in Covent Garden in 1785, 'She remains in this situation
without shelter, and perseveres in her mournful duty at the hazard
of her own life from the inclemencies of the weather.'ยน8 Wright
here uses the erupting volcano as a sign of the most terrible weather
that he could possibly imagine the widow could suffer. It is an
early example of a volcanic metaphor being used with serious
artistic intent.
Image not available - no digital rights
Joseph Wright of Derby,
The Widow of an Indian
Chief Watching the Arms
of her Deceased Husband
,
1785, oil on canvas.
