Portrait of Lady Wright

Lady Wright was the wife of Sir Sampson Wright, chief magistrate of Bow Street. In her portrait she sits in an elevated and angled position with her eyes firmly fixed on the viewer just below her. During the 1780s, George Romney frequently painted his female sitters in wide-brimmed hats, as can be seen here where Lady Wright wears a large cream-colored hat with a very wide brim and pale ribbon. Lady Wright’s dress is a rich mauve taffeta with ruffles around the neck and sleeves. The seriousness of her expression is contrasted by the frivolous feathery exuberance of the lace and ribbons on her hat and clothes. The immediacy of Romney’s brushstrokes gives the impression that the painting was dashed off quickly, a quality for which Romney was famous. As recorded in his sitter books, however, Lady Wright sat for Romney on seven occasions between 1779 and 1780.

Romney left school around the age of ten to work with his father, a cabinetmaker; apprenticed to a painter in 1755; and then started his own practice. In 1773 he closed his shop and moved to Rome. Although he had to borrow money in order to return to London in 1775, shortly after reestablishing his practice he quickly became the most fashionable portrait painter in London. His prices were set lower than those of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, perhaps a gesture made to distinguish himself in the market from his contemporary rivals. Afraid of criticism, Romney refused to show his work at the Royal Academy. It was appealing to many of his clients that their privacy would be protected and their portraits would not hang in public exhibition spaces. After Romney’s death, however, the Portrait of Lady Wright was eventually displayed in the Royal Academy’s winter exhibition of 1887.