Wright studied drawing and mathematics at Christ's Hospital in London and travelled to North America in 1758 as apprentice to the Surveyor General in Georgia. He sailed to England in 1763 and returned to the colony as deputy to Samuel Johannes Holland, the Surveyor General of the Province of Quebec and of the Northern District of North America. In the 1770s Governor Walter Patterson appointed Wright a member of the Council of St. John and he later became Surveyor-General of the colony. He died on Prince Edward Island in 1812.

For a similar drawing by the artist, which also shows his training as a cartographer, see his A South East View of the City of Montreal in Canada (1770) reproduced in C. Graham, Mount Royal - Ville-Marie, Early Plans and Views of Montreal, Montreal, 1992, p. 42, no. 10