WRIGHT, John Michael
English painter. He was the son of James Wright, a tailor. It is likely that his family were London-based Scots, for he was apprenticed to the Edinburgh portrait painter George Jamesone (1589-1644) from 1636 to 1641.
In the early 1640s he left Scotland for Rome, where he painted his earliest known portrait, Robert Bruce, 1st Earl of Ailesbury (private collection). He was soon sufficiently prosperous to collect books, prints, paintings, gems and medals, some of which were listed by the English amateur painter Richard Symonds in the early 1650s, when the collection included works attributed to Mantegna, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Correggio.
Wright probably worked as a copyist and dealer, but his own work was sufficiently admired for him to be elected to the Accademia di San Luca in 1648. In 1653-54 he won a place in the suite of Archduke Leopold William of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and left Italy for Flanders. In 1656 he returned to London, leaving his family in Rome.
By the end of the decade, he had become a successful London portrait painter in a colourful Baroque style, but with a due care for character and honesty which is sometimes missing from the productions of Peter Lely, his fashionable rival. He was occasionally employed by the Crown, he painted the ceiling for Charles II’s bedroom at Whitehall Palace (Nottingham Castle Museum) and a long series of portraits of Judges for the Guildhall (all but two destroyed in WWII). He was the first portrait painter of substance to visit Ireland (1679-80) and was back in Rome 1685-87 as part of Lord Castlemaine’s embassy to the Pope.
His career went into decline as court patronage was lost when James II abdicated, and taste moved towards the newly arrived Sir Godfrey Kneller. His later life was spent in genteel poverty amidst his books and art collection (which he bequeathed to his nephew Michael Wright).
Wright style is vigorous and bold, his colours well saturated and his handling of paint free and confident. His portraits are usually direct and appealing, and have a strong sense of character and strongly suggest an accurate likeness.
