Qualla: Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger from Derby, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. In one corner of the Derby Museum hangs a painting called The Alchymist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone. A figure in a long robe kneels in front of a flask that is exploding into light. The light is not metaphor: in 1669 a German alchemist named Hennig Brand really did boil down enormous quantities of his own urine in pursuit of a way to make gold, and what he produced instead was phosphorus, which ignites spontaneously in air. The painter, Joseph Wright of Derby, was depicting an actual scientific discovery in a style that made it look like a religious vision. The museum that houses this picture, along with more than 300 other Wright works, is essentially a memorial to the moment when science replaced faith as the central drama of European life, painted by an artist who lived and worked here.

Image: Roger from Derby, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: From Mechanics' Institute to Public Museum

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Chris Harris, Public domain. The story of the museum starts on 10 February 1836 with the founding of the Derby Town and County Museum and Natural History Society, a typical Victorian gathering of clergymen, doctors, and gentleman collectors. In 1839 the group held a major exhibition at the Mechanics' Institu...

Image: User:Chris Harris | Public domain

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: The Lunar Society in Paint

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger from Derby, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Eighteenth-century Derby sat at the center of a quiet revolution. The Lunar Society, an informal club that met by moonlight in Birmingham so members could ride home safely after dinner, brought together Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Priestley, and Josiah Wedgwood, with ...

Image: Roger from Derby, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: The Air Pump and the Guillotine

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Off2riorob, CC BY 3.0. The paintings are not just charming science demonstrations. Edmund Burke, the political philosopher, wrote in 1790's Reflections on the Revolution in France that British radicals who supported science "considered man in their experiments no more than they do mice in an air pump."...

Image: Off2riorob | CC BY 3.0

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: The Bonnie Prince Charlie Room

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Chris Harris at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. Tucked into the museum's upper floor is a panelled room reconstructed from the original Exeter House, demolished in 1854, where Charles Edward Stuart held his council of war on 5 December 1745. Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite army had marched as far south as Derby, the closest a...

Image: The original uploader was Chris Harris at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Derby Museum and Art Gallery: Pa-Sheri and the Repton Stone

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poliphilo, CC0. The wider collection has its share of unexpected residents. A carved fragment of a cross shaft from Repton, known as the Repton Stone, shows a mounted figure in mail armour with a diadem, which some scholars argue is a memorial to King Aethelbald of Mercia, killed in 757 and buri...

Image: Poliphilo | CC0