Grotto by the Seaside in the Kingdom of Naples with Banditti, Sunset

Wright painted this in Derby in 1778, three years after he came home from Italy. Near Salerno, south of Naples, he had sketched the grottoes along the coast, and for years afterwards he turned those drawings into pictures. Here the arch of a sea cave frames a bay under the setting sun, and a group of melancholy bandits gathers in the foreground. In August 1780 Wright sent a bill to Josiah Cockshutt of Chaddesden, just outside Derby, for this canvas and two others, a cavern with the figure of Julia and Virgil's tomb. Cockshutt's grandson parted with it in 1840 to Godfrey Meynell, of Meynell Langley a few miles away, in settlement of a debt. It stayed with the Meynells until 1986, so for more than two centuries it hung within a short ride of the town where it was painted. The museum bought it from the London dealers Agnew's in 1990.