Mary Bold, Mrs Thomas III Hunt (1740 - 1824)

This 1765 portrait of Mary Bold, Mrs Thomas Hunt, depicts a Lancashire gentlewoman and demonstrates Wright's growing confidence as a portraitist in the mid-1760s. The portrait shows the transition from his early, somewhat stiff manner to the warmer, more naturalistic approach of his maturity. Wright mastered oil on canvas chiaroscuro effects inspired by Dutch nocturnal painters and Caravaggio, creating scenes lit by single artificial sources—candles, furnaces, molten metal—that gave his...

The portrait shows Wright's developing ability to render fabrics and flesh with increasing refinement, while maintaining the honest characterization that distinguished his work from more flattering London portraitists.