Peter Perez Burdett and his First Wife Hannah

Joseph Wright of Derby painted Peter Perez Burdett and His First Wife Hannah around 1765, one of his conversation piece portraits that combines the informal outdoor or domestic setting of the conversation piece genre with his characteristic attention to the quality of light. Burdett was a topographer, cartographer, and close friend who moved in the same Lunar Society circles as Wright, and the portrait has an intellectual warmth appropriate to a friendship between two men engaged in the empirical observation of the world. Wright's ability to capture the informal intimacy of a couple in the natural setting of their domestic life while maintaining the quality of a finished exhibition work is evident in the portrait's combination of ease and technical accomplishment.

Wright arranges the couple in an intimate domestic setting with careful attention to the play of light on their features. The warm tonality and precise rendering of fabrics and expressions demonstrate Wright's skill in the conversation piece tradition.