Joseph Wright's Derby homecoming: dazzling, daring – and still in danger

Exclusive: In an audacious coup involving a Manhattan auction house, an anonymous agent and a secret bid, Derby has brought home a pair of masterworks by its star son, even as his wider collection faces the cut

Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1766 masterpiece, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, is a painting that shoots you into outer space. So intense is the light glowing on its circle of 18th-century faces from an illuminated model of the solar system, it’s as if we are all orbiting this star of science.

Wright is England’s answer to Caravaggio, a master of light and shadow and the man behind one of the most celebrated images of science ever created. This painting has appeared in countless books and TV documentaries. How, then, can it belong to one of the most endangered public galleries in Britain?

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