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Frances Wright

Frances Wright
Artist
Nagel & Weingaertner Lithography Company, active 1849 - 1857
Copy after
Johan Gorbitz, 1782 - 1853
Sitter
Frances Wright, 6 Sep 1795 - 13 Dec 1852
Date
c. 1852
Type
Print
Medium
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 46.3 × 35.5 cm (18 1/4 × 14")
Topic
Interior
Home Furnishings\Furniture\Seating\Chair
Printed Material\Papers
Costume\Dress Accessory\Handkerchief
Home Furnishings\Furniture\Table\Writing table
Equipment\Drafting & Writing Implements\Writing implement\Pen\Quill
Equipment\Drafting & Writing Implements\Inkstand
Frances Wright: Female
Frances Wright: Literature\Writer
Frances Wright: Education and Scholarship\Educator\Lecturer
Frances Wright: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Social reformer
Frances Wright: Journalism and Media\Newspaper editor
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.77.217
Exhibition Label
Born Dundee, Scotland
As a young girl in Scotland, Frances Wright developed an intense admiration for the Declaration of Independence. The document inspired her lifelong commitment to social reform and prompted her to encourage the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Her book Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) praised the positive effects of liberty and freedom while denouncing the injustice of slavery.
After becoming a United States citizen in 1825, Wright purchased several hundred acres in Tennessee and established Nashoba, a utopian community devoted to racial and gender equality, where enslaved men and women could receive education and training while working to earn their freedom. When the experiment failed after five years, Wright resettled the commune’s thirty residents in Haiti. Always one to defy convention, she later traveled around the country, delivering lectures that advocated for women’s rights, liberalized divorce laws, birth control, state-sponsored education, and the abolition of capital punishment.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Location
Currently not on view