Thomas Wright

Thomas Wright (born in Birmingham in 1792, died in London in 1849) was an English engraver and portrait painter, known above all for stipple engraving. He trained as an apprentice to Henry Meyer and then spent four years as assistant to William Thomas Fry, for whom he engraved a popular plate showing Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in a box at the Covent Garden Theatre. Around 1817 he began working on his own, also taking portraits in pencil and miniature.

He became closely associated with the painter George Dawe, whose sister he married. In 1822 he followed Dawe to St Petersburg to engrave his gallery of Russian generals. There he also produced plates of Emperor Alexander and of Empress Alexandra with her children, which earned him diamond rings from members of the royal family and a gold medal from the King of Prussia. He returned to England in 1826 and over the next four years worked on the plates for Anna Jameson's *Beauties of the Court of Charles II*, generally regarded as his finest work.

In 1830 he went back to Russia, where he stayed for fifteen years under court patronage. He published a series of portraits, *Les Contemporains Russes*, which he drew and engraved himself. When he finally left St Petersburg he gave the Hermitage about 300 impressions from his plates. He was a member of the academies of St Petersburg, Florence and Stockholm, and his reputation rests mainly on the quality of his engraved portraits.