# Indian Widow [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [WRIGHT, Joseph]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 102 x 127 cm ## Commentary Wright had never crossed the Atlantic, but reading James Adair's History of the American Indians \(1775\) he had found an account of the vigil kept by the widow of a brave 'for the first moon ... under his mourning war-pole', and had painted his Widow of an Indian Chief to join three other pictures of women empowered by virtue, love or loyalty. In this picture the Native American's bearing is that of an antique statue, while the stormy shore with its volcano has more to do with Naples, which Wright had seen as a young man, than with America. ## Related artworks - [A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno]() - [A Philosopher Lecturing with a Mechanical Planetary]() - [Academy by Lamplight \(detail\)]() - [Academy by Lamplight]() - [An Academy by Lamplight]() - [Earthstopper at the Bank of Derwent]() - [Experiment with the Air Pump]() - [Iron Forge Viewed from Outside]() - [Landscape with Rainbow]() - [Miravan Opening the Grave of his Forefathers]() - [Portrait of Jane Darwin and Her Son William Brown Darwin]() - [Portrait of Rev. Christopher Alderson]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()