LAYING SIEGE TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY: WRIGHT OF DERBY'S VIEW OF GIBRALTAR AT ROBINS'S ROOMS, COVENT GARDEN, APRIL 1785.

This essay examines the circumstances surrounding the first exhibition of Joseph Wright of Derby's epic contemporary history painting View of Gibraltar during the destruction of the Spanish Floating Batteries, 13 September 1782. This intensely dramatic depiction of siege warfare was the centrepiece of a one-man show, held by the artist at Robins's Rooms, Covent Garden, between April and June 1785, an exhibition staged in direct rivalry with the Royal Academy, of whom Wright had fallen foul two years earlier. It is argued that the iconography of the exhibition, in concert with a number of associated publications, deliberately highlighted the confrontations, contests and infighting between artists that were such a marked feature of the London art world of the mid-1780s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]