Harriet Wright was a pioneer and settler in the Plenty District. It is often difficult to find records of women at this time but for Harriet a hint of her pedigree is given on her headstone in Yan Yean Cemetery (Whittlesea):
Sacred
To the memory of
HARRIET WRIGHT
Second daughter of
JOSEPH WRIGHT ESQ.
Artist Derby England
Died July 8th 1860
Aged 82 years
The Argus published a death notice Thursday 19 July 1860
On the 8th inst., at the Upper Plenty, Harriet Wright, daughter of the late Joseph Wright, Esq.,
portrait painter, of Derby, England. Home papers.
Harriet was born in 1790 and emigrated to Melbourne in 1841 aged 19, after her father has died. She did not marry and died in 1860 aged 82 years. She left her modest estate to her nephew Graham Cade.
The Derby Art Gallery in England houses the best collection of paintings by Joseph Wright (1734- 1797) with a dedicated gallery devoted to the artist. “Famed as a “painter of light” and for his association with key members of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, he is now considered to be one of Britain’s most interesting and wide-ranging painters.”
This collection includes a portrait of his daughter Harriet.
The National Gallery of Victoria also holds some of Wright’s painting, including his “Self-portrait as a young man”. In fact paintings that originated from Harriet. More can be read on an essay by Laurie Benson on the NGV website
