Career
After serving an apprenticeship with Henry Meyer, and worked for four years as assistant to William Thomas Fry, for whom he engraved the popular plate of Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in a box at Covent Garden Theatre. About 1817 he began to practise independently as a stipple-engraver, and also found employment in taking portraits in pencil and miniature. Wright returned to England in 1826, and during the next four years was employed upon the plates to Jameson"s ‘Beauties of the Court of Charles II,’ which constitute his best work.
Also upon some of the plates to the folio edition of Edmund Lodge"s ‘Portraits.’ In 1830 he again went to Russia, and remained for fifteen years, working under the patronage of the court.
There he published a series of portraits entitled ‘Les Contemporains Russes,’ drawn and engraved by himself. On finally leaving Saint St. Petersburg Wright presented a complete collection of impressions from his plates, numbering about 300, to the Hermitage Gallery.
He was born at Birmingham on 2 March 1792. He died in George Street, Hanover Square, London, on 30 March 1849.