The Dead Soldier

Regarded at the time of its creation to be one of Wrights most significant paintings. Wright turned to the poem of John Langhorne, The Country Justice. The first part of the poem reads: "Perhaps on some inhospitable shore The houseless wretch a widow’d parent bore; Who, then no more by golden prospects led, Of the poor Indian begg’d a leafy bed. Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden’s plain, Perhaps that parent mourn’d her soldier slain; Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolv’d in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery, baptiz’d in tears!".