The Derwent Trilogy

Joseph Wright was trained as a portrait painter, yet today he is not first thought of for his face-painting, though he did come to be one of the eighteenth century’s foremost practitioners. He grew to tire of it, as many of his artistic contemporaries did.

What we do know him for is those amazing ‘science’ pictures, the forge paintings, the roaring volcanoes and fireworks, and the candlelight scenes: it was these that came to define him. Yet by the end of his life he was doing little but landscapes: these came to absorb him the most.

Painting Faces explores his artistic ambitions and connects these with his emotional and intellectual journeys too. He lived in a golden time surrounded by some of the leading figures of his generation. Some were friends, some clients and patrons and they all influenced him. They are all there in Painting Faces.

Richard Arkwright and Joseph Wright were practically the same age, Arkwright dying earlier than Wright in 1792 at only fifty-nine. It was only in his late thirties that he turned his back on his trade of barber-surgeon and wigmaker and made his first stuttering starts in the cotton-spinning trade: then little more than a cottage industry. His second wife, Margaret, would have none of it: he had already lost much of what little money she had in a failed inn-keeping venture. Most unusually for the time, she separated from him.

Without capital, but possessed of a mighty idea that he was convinced could make his fortune, he battled on without her. But he needed capital, and that meant taking on partners….

Everything that followed was shaped by Arkwright’s ruthless determination and drive. He strove to become what Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations ~ at exactly the same time ~ was warning against: a market monopolist ~ even an oligarch.

The Water Cure will be the final volume. Set in Matlock Dale, the story begins in the morbid fear of illness in an age when diagnosis and treatment of almost any ailment were still very limited. One man ~ John Smedley ~ was so convinced that he could cure almost any common malady that he invested his entire profits from his textile business into offering ’the water cure’, a confection of treatments and regimens that would purge and purify his patients.

There had long been mineral waters and baths in Matlock Bath, and many other spa towns around the country and in Europe and, for a while, Matlock Dale became the epicentre of hydropathy. Why did it become so popular, so trusted? And how far did religious, medical and psychological needs become entwined?

Steve Farnsworth

The books began with a lifelong interest in Joseph Wright but then grew as I thought more about the really rather remarkable river valley that I have known for so long.

One book is in print, one half-written and one on the stocks. I did not set out to write this much, but have found out ~ as so often occurs in life ~ that one thing just leads to another.

I hope people enjoy the stories and can engage with the incredibly strong characters that form the core of each book. I hope to spike the reader’s interest and appreciation of what these characters achieved ~ and what it cost them. Please click below to read more about my background and the books themselves.
Apologies for the picture: it’s a selfie taken in Dylan and Caitlin Thomas’s back garden in Laugharne.