(b London, May 1617; d London, July 1694). English painter. He was the son of James Wright, a tailor, and from 1636 to 1641 was apprenticed to the Edinburgh portrait painter George Jamesone. In the early 1640s he left Scotland for Rome, where he painted his earliest known portrait, Robert Bruce, 1st Earl of Ailesbury (Tottenham House, Wilts, Marquess of Ailesbury priv. col.). 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 S Luca in 1648. In 1653/4 he won a place in the suite of Archduke Leopold William of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and left Italy for Flanders.
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