LONDON, ENGLAND.- Minister of State for the Arts, Tessa Blackstone, has placed a temporary bar on the export of a portrait of Richard Arkwright junior with his wife Mary and daughter Anne, 1790, painted by Joseph Wright of Derby. This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the portrait in the United Kingdom. The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred. This reflects the inseverable connection of the sitter to the development of industrial power in the Derwent Valley, and the historical importance of the resulting cultural landscape.
The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market price:
A Portrait of Richard Arkwright junior with his wife Mary and daughter Anne by Joseph Wright of Derby, deferred at the recommended price of £1,217,500 (inclusive of VAT) until after 18 April 2003. The deferral period could be extended until after 18 August 2003 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase.
Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the portrait should contact the
owner’s agent through:
The Secretary The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2-4 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5DH. 
The portrait is in oil on canvas and measures 243 x 159 cm. It shows Richard Arkwright junior, and his wife Mary with their daughter Anne. This family group portrait was the most ambitious of four paintings produced by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797) for the famous cotton manufacturer Sir Richard Arkwright (senior) in the 1780s and 1790s. It originally hung with the other three in the dining room at Willersley Castle, the family estate at Cromford. When the estate was sold in 1993, the painting was loaned to Derby Museum and Art Gallery where it hung with its pendant, a portrait of Richard Arkwright senior. It was sold at Sotheby’s on 29th November 2001.
The Arkwright family are synonymous with the development of industrial power in the Derwent Valley. Their industrial developments transformed the social and economic structure of the area. Richard Arkwright senior (1732-1792) put into practice his patented spinning process and used his management expertise in the development of large, water-powered mills. He created an industrial empire that brought great wealth to his family but also far-reaching changes to the lives of people in the Derwent valley.
Richard Arkwright junior (1755-1843) equaled his father’s achievements. He played a pivotal role in the growth of what was essentially a family business during the six or seven years from 1777 when it reached out from its birth place in the Derwent Valley across Northern England and Scotland. By the age of 37, when he inherited his father’s businesses, he was already one of the greatest spinners in the country.
As a young man Arkwright junior began to lay the foundations of the fortune he was later to amass outside cotton spinning. His major investments were in Government stocks. He also acted as a banker to the gentry and the aristocracy, and continued his father’s support for the improvement of the local transport infrastructure investing in the Cromford Canal, the Peak Forest and Macclesfield Canals and the Cromford and High Peak Railway. At the time of his death Arkwright’s fortune was estimated at £3¼ million and he was described as ‘the richest commoner in Europe’.
The historical importance of the Derwent Valley is still evident today, manifested in the large number of surviving textile mills and the re-written landscape that surrounds them. Following nomination by HM Government in 1999, Derwent Valley Mills were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in December 2001.
The artist, Joseph Wright, was a contemporary and near neighbour to many extraordinary men of the Enlightenment. He also had links with the English Midland’s intellectual fraternity, the core of which was The Lunar Society. These connections provided him with a wider philosophical understanding with which to interpret the heroic father figures and activities of the Industrial Revolution, embracing individuals such as the Arkwrights and Jedediah Strutt.
The four Arkwright portraits, commissioned by Sir Richard Arkwright, represent the only known series of family portraits painted by Wright. They are amongst the most familiar of all Wright’s portraits, and have long been regarded as the outstanding culmination of his late style in portraiture. The portrait of Richard Arkwright with his Wife and Daughter is ambitious in size and highly successful in composition. The grand scale of the portrait celebrates the wealth and status of Richard Arkwright and his family.
In the companion portraits of Sir Richard Arkwright, and of his son Richard, Joseph Wright charts the family’s changing status. Richard Arkwright senior is shown modestly dressed sitting on a fairly simple chair with spools of cotton at his side, still closely linked to his humble background. On the other hand, the portrait of his son, Richard Arkwright junior, shows the sitter as the established country landowner, assured with his fashionably dressed wife and daughter against the background of his park. Richard senior is shown with the origin of the family’s wealth; Richard junior is shown with the fruits of its success consolidated.
The recommended price at which the application to export the portrait is deferred is £1,217,500(including VAT).