科学是奇妙的，但有时却是残忍可怕的。约瑟夫·赖特用这幅名为《气泵里的鸟实验》的油画说明了这一点。

　　这幅画所描绘的是，在一间昏暗的房间里，人们围聚在桌旁，借助着蜡烛光和窗外射来的淡淡月光，神情各异地看着一位旅行科学家展示他的实验。而这位科学家所做的实验，是把烧瓶中的空气通过气泵抽出后，观察烧瓶中的鸟会怎样。与此同时，在仪器前方的发光玻璃容器中，还隐藏着一个邪恶的头骨……

　　约瑟夫·赖特在英国绘画史上不大被人们提起。在赖特之前是否有画家还触及过工业方面我们不得而知，但赖特的确是独特的。他专画机器、工厂、实验室环境。他喜欢弄暗环境，并用月光、火光等效果来渲染。这幅《气泵里的鸟实验》就是典型作品之一。

　An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a vacuum. Will the lecturer expel the air completely and kill the bird, or allow the air back in and revive it? Wright focuses on the viewers‘ differing reactions – from the girl unable to watch to the lovers with eyes only for each other.

　This is the largest, most ambitious and dramatic of the series of ’candlelight' pictures Wright painted during the 1760s. It captures the drama of a staged scientific experiment but it also functions as a vanitas – a painting concerning the passing of time, the limits of human knowledge and the frailty of life itself.

百度翻译：http://fanyi.baidu.com/