23 facts about John Michael Wright

John Michael Wright (May 1617 – July 1694) was an Englishportrait painter in the Baroque style. Wright trained in Edinburgh below the Scots painter George Jamesone, and acquired a considerable reputation as an player and scholar during a long sojourn in Rome. There he was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca, and was allied with some of the leading artists of his generation. He was engaged by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the executive of the Spanish Netherlands, to acquire artworks in Oliver Cromwell’s England in 1655. He took up long-lasting residence in England from 1656, and served as court painter before and after the English Restoration. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he was a favourite of the restored Stuart court, a client of both Charles II and James II, and was a witness to many of the political maneuverings of the era. In the unqualified years of the Stuart monarchy he returned to Rome as allowance of an political to Pope Innocent XI.

Wright is currently rated as one of the leading indigenous English painters of his generation, largely for the distinctive authenticity in his portraiture. Perhaps due to the unusually cosmopolitan flora and fauna of his experience, he was favoured by patrons at the highest level of group in an age in which foreign artists were usually preferred. Wright’s paintings of royalty and aristocracy are included surrounded by the collections of many leading galleries today.