Samuel Crompton (c.1720–1782)

The portrait of Samuel Crompton, painted in 1780 and now in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, depicts a member of the Derbyshire gentry (not to be confused with Samuel Crompton the inventor of the spinning mule, who was from Lancashire). Wright's steady production of portraits for the local gentry provided the financial foundation for his more experimental works, and by 1780 he maintained an active practice serving both the traditional landed class and the new industrial and professional elites of the East Midlands. He had returned from Italy in 1775 and settled permanently in Derby, where he remained for the rest of his career except for a brief period in Bath. His portrait manner by 1780 was fully formed: honest, warm, psychologically direct, avoiding both the grand manner of Reynolds and the elegance of Gainsborough in favor of a straightforward engagement with the individual before him. Samuel Crompton's portrait is a representative example of Wright's working practice at this period — competent, warm, and true to the sitter — part of the continuous stream of portrait commissions that ran alongside his more ambitious landscape and subject paintings throughout his career.

The portrait follows Wright's established format for male subjects, with careful characterization and natural lighting that convey the sitter's personality with unaffected directness.