“Though wonder is doubtless the energy that pulses through the brush of every committed painter, in truth, only a rare few have managed successfully to capture its essence as a palpable property in their work. The recent rediscovery in 2019 of a work by the British Enlightenment artist Joseph Wright of Derby that was hitherto unknown to art historians, was itself a cause for awe, nicely echoing the very subject of the painting: two boys testing the volume of a luminous bladder, lit up by the flicker of an unseen flame guttering behind it.”

• BBC culture