Joseph Wright's Derby homecoming: dazzling, daring – and still in danger

Exclusive: In an audacious coup involving a Manhattan auction house, an anonymous agent and a secret bid, Derby has brought home a pair of masterworks by its star son, even as his wider collection faces the cutJoseph Wright of Derby’s 1766 masterpiece, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, is a painting that shoots you into outer space. So intense is the light glowing on its circle of 18th-century faces from an illuminated model of the solar system, it’s as if we are all orbiting th