An American portrait artist whose brief Mint service helped establish a distinctly national visual language for early federal coinage.
Biography
Wright trained as a painter and worked in the orbit of Benjamin West before returning to the United States. In 1793 he supplied designs and engraving work to the new Philadelphia Mint, but his career there ended with his death during the yellow-fever epidemic.
Style and legacy
His surviving and attributed work favors direct profile portraiture and uncluttered neoclassical forms suited to the hand-cut dies of the first Mint. Wright occupies an important transitional position between American portrait painting and federal coin design. The record supports Mint design and die work, but not the later title of Chief Engraver.