This weeks Work of Art is called "Experiment on a bird with an Air Pump" painted in 1768 by Joseph Wright of Derby and currently on display in the Tate Gallery in London. It's not really my cup of tea, but I had to do a presentation on this a few years ago at my OU Summer School and once you start digging into it it is fascinating in the extreme. The children are a mixture of fascinated and upset, the two people on the left seem more interested in each other. Who is the man pointing, is he their father, an uncle? Who knows? One of the most intriguing things about this is where the light source is. Is there a candle behind the large glass? And just what is that inside the glass? What is the boy on right doing? Is he trying to leave? Notice the fact that its a full moon but yet the room is dark and seemingly barely any light from the moon is entering it. I could go on, but I'd be recreating the presentation which was a struggle to do in the allotted time. The painting had looked easy to critique but just kept turning more and more layers. Wright was renowned for his use of light, and his treatment of the new science stuff mixed in with the romanticism of the pre-industrial revolution era. But perhaps the biggest question was the one I posed at the presentation. Was that man holding the top part of the pump a relative of Peter Stringfellow? Later, Grocerjack