Life or death in Joseph Wright’s 1768 painting | Letter

<p><strong>Harriet Monkhouse </strong>responds to a review of the National Gallery exhibition that includes An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump</p><p>Re Jonathan Jones’s review of the Joseph Wright of Derby exhibition at the National Gallery, and his 1768 painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/nov/04/wright-of-derby-from-the-shadows-review-national-gallery-london">Wright of Derby: From the Shadows review – science, skeletons and a suffocated cockatoo, 4 November</a>), the good news is that the bird probably&nbsp;doesn’t die after all.</p><p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027trk">An episode of Radio 4’s Moving Pictures</a>, broadcast in February, told us that the air pump resembles those produced in this period by Benjamin Martin, which were supplied with instructions for experiments to try at home.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/nov/11/was-it-life-or-death-in-joseph-wrights-1768-painting">Continue reading...</a>