Wright's Chieftain Paintings as Documents of Early Gaelic Dress.

[OC Richard]

He doesn't really address what I would want to know about, the provenance of the various paintings as can be determined by the paintings themselves as artifacts.

He mentions that on the back of "Irish Chieftain" painting is

"Wright’s signature Wright Londsis Pictor Regius/pinxit. 1680"

I have several questions. I'm no expert on Wright and I don't know if that's the way he signed his paintings.

If it is the way he signed his paintings, has an expert determined that the writing matches other examples of Wright's signature?

Without such a determination the attribution could have been written by anyone at any time.

The author of the article (unless I missed it) doesn't say anything about signatures on the other paintings.

I will say that the four different (unique) paintings, the Irish Chieftain, the Scottish Highlander, the Actor, and the woman they show in black & white all appear to be by a very skilled painter. Moreover there's a similarity in facial structure and features that the paintings share- there's a saying that "artists tend to paint themselves". Also in the oldfashioned art teaching system artists were trained to draw/paint an "archetype" face and many would tend to skew whoever they painted towards this archetype.

Nevertheless I wonder why the author takes for granted that the Highland paintings were painted by Wright. Are they signed? How are they signed? That's what I would like to know more about.