He was encouraged in his creative ambitions by his father, as was his brother John. Another brother, William, would go on to become Methodist Bishop of South Carolina and president of Wofford College. His father was an amateur painter, Edward Greene Malbone painted miniature portraits of his parents, and the two men may have had some contact at that point.
Otherwise, Wightman studied with Henry Inman in New New York The date is not known, but might be around 1832, because he began contributing to the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design in that year.
Wightman was a native of Charleston, South Carolina. The catalog showed his address as 75 White Street, in a well-established neighborhood, indicating that he was already seeing some success as a painter. Somewhere between 1836 and 1841 he returned to Charleston for a visit, but he is known to have been back in New York by the summer of the latter year, for further study.
He modeled his style of portraiture on that of Inman, and developed for himself a good clientele in both Charleston and New New York
Wightman became an associate of the National Academy in 1849, and contributed fairly steadily to annual exhibitions until 1854. He rarely offered an address with his submissions, which may indicate that he was an itinerant at this time, although a number of addresses around New York are known from this period in his career.
He usually showed only one or two works in each show, either portraits or still life paintings of fruit. He first exhibited a "fruit piece" in the 1844 exhibition.
His still lifes indicate some familiarity with the genre as it had been previously practiced by Dutch artists.
By the spring of 1861 the painter had returned south for good. He was buried in the family plot in Augusta"s Magnolia Cemetery. A eulogy published in Academy minutes on the occasion of his death described him as an "excellent artist and a most worthy man".
Two still life pieces by Wightman are today in the Johnson Collection of Southern art in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
A self-portrait, submitted upon his designation as Associate in 1849, remains in the collection of the National Academy.
