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Catharine Wharton Morris was born on January 26, 1899, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Harrison S. Morris, was a painter, a director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and editor of Lippincott’s Magazine. Her mother, Anna Wharton Morris, was a Quaker and activist for prison reform, whose father founded the Wharton School of Business.
When Kit – as she was known to everyone – was 12, her father was appointed Commissioner General of the Art Exposition in Rome. There, she met artists such as John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Claude Monet. In her late teens, she studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.
From an early age, Kit had summered in Jamestown. As a child, she spent time at “Horsehead,” her grandfather’s vacation home. Later she, her husband Sydney Longstreth Wright, and their four children – Anna, William Redwood, Harrison Morris, and Ellicott – lived at Beavertail Farm, and in 1947, the family moved to Fox Hill Farm.
In Jamestown, Kit painted, wrote, and taught art. “Red, White & Blue,” an oil painting of the Beavertail radar station soon after World War II, is one of the prized possessions in the JHS collection.
Several of her landscapes and seascapes were issued on postcards:
Kit also did portraits, such as “A Drawing of Eleanor Hall”.
Kit published two books of poetry, a biography of Mary Mapes Dodge, and an autobiography, The Color of Life. In 1963, she and her husband wrote The Good Old Summer Time, a collection of photos and memories of their time in Jamestown. In the 1970s, she worked with Shirley Tiexiera Quattromani to interview Jamestown residents of Portuguese ancestry and produced the book The Portuguese of Conanicut Island: History Through Memories, 1895-1980.
Catharine Morris Wright died in 1988 in Jamestown.
Click here for more on The Art of Kit Wright.
