Attributed to Thomas Jefferson Wright (1798-1845) 

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American and Continental Decorative Art and F...

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Feb 21, 2015 - Feb 22, 2015

Set Reminder 2015-02-21 10:00:00 2015-02-22 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : American and Continental Decorative Art and Furniture: Live Salesroom Auction https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/cowans/american-and-continental-decorative-art-and-furniture-live-salesroom-auction-434
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• Lot Description

  Attributed to Thomas Jefferson Wright (1798-1845) 
  
  Portrait of a Lady
  oil on canvas
  ca 1845
  unsigned
  28.5 x 24.25 in. (canvas size)
  
  This portrait, recently discovered in Louisville, is a rare and finely painted example of the work of Thomas Jefferson Wright (1798-1845). Wright was a native of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. His father, a Welsh tailor, migrated to Kentucky in the early 1790s. By all accounts, young Wright was a prodigy, one whose early sketches and fledgling portraits brought him to the attention of Kentucky portrait master Matthew Harris Jouett. Wright, intent on studying with Thomas Sully in Philadelphia, asked Jouett for a letter of introduction in 1822. Jouett’s charmingly high-toned epistle assumes that the “kindness with which you have heretofore honored my letters and commissions of every sort leaves but little ground to distrust the entire success of this application in favor of my young friend Jefferson Wright to whose acquaintance I hereby entreat you to be introduced.  You will find Mr. W. amiable modest and entirely upon the reserve.  He visits Philadelphia with the view to avail himself of the helps, of the academy and the artists in portrait painting.  Of his abilities I cannot speak decisively—They are reputed promising in this country and I believe them to be so.  By his enthusiasm and industry he has become enabled to visit your city and with prospects of a tolerably long stay—Altho entirely devoid of the graces of early learning—you will find him by no means destitute of those lights characteristic of a good mind attentive to the object of its pursuit.” (E. T. Whitley, Kentucky Ante-Bellum Portraiture, 1955, p. 783). While little in Wright’s work evinces the vague contours and soft focus of Sully’s work, he does seem to have acquired Sully’s ambitious intent. Upon his return to Kentucky in 1830, the Howard family of MontgomeryCounty, vast landowners with a taste for portraiture and substantial houses, gave him several commissions. In these works Wright defined his signature style:  warm, vivid coloration; great attention to detail in clothing and head gear; and a lush gathering of drapery before whose sumptuous folds the subject sits in grand dignity and appropriate distance. As his style progressed so did his affectation of highly detailed settings, elaborately swaged drapery, landscape views, and atmospheric cloud formations. As in this painting, he tended to elevate the subject’s head, placing it high on the planar field, a pose from which she gazes forth with a careful side-long glance, at once cautious and slyly inviting. After painting the Howards, Wright made an itinerant excursion to Virginia in 1832 where he painted members of the Major family of Fairview Plantation in Culpeper County. His portrait of Elizabeth Major, to which this work favorably compares, is in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. By 1837 he had joined his brother, cabinet-maker Benjamin Franklin Wright, in Texas. He advertised in the Houston paper that year, and drew a commission from Sam Houston. His most notable Texas work is a portrait of Juan Seguin, a Tejano hero of the Texas Revolution with whom he was also one of the founders of the Masonic order in Texas. (Texas State Library, Austin) In 1842, he abandoned portraiture for a tour of duty with the Somervell expedition during the Mexican War. Then in 1845, he returned to Kentucky. This portrait most likely dates from his late period of activity in Louisville, as the anatomical contouring is bolder, and more closely related to the American Empire style than the slight attenuations of his more Federal early work. The return visit to Kentucky was most fateful. While there he contracted jaundice, died, and was buried in Louisville. The emergence of this portrait adds another painting to the slight volume of work which can be reasonably attributed to him, providing an exceptional opportunity for collectors of early Kentucky portraiture.
  
  Cowan's is grateful to Estill Curtis Pennington, author of Lessons in Likeness:  Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley 1800-1920 for this essay.

  Condition

  Overall craquelure. Paint separation in red fabric behind sitter. Paint is stable. Old varnish on surface has pooled/collected in areas, such as the sitter's forehead. There are losses to the perimeter from an old frame.

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