Liberty Cap Large Cents

Joseph Wright almost certainly designed the Liberty Cap cent, though he did not live to see it through. Wright was a Philadelphia portrait painter, trained under Benjamin West in London, and he had painted George Washington from life before receiving his appointment as Mint engraver in the summer of 1793. The Liberty head he prepared for the new cent showed real improvement over the crude Flowing Hair portrait that had embarrassed the Mint earlier that year. He depicted Liberty facing right with a Phrygian cap on a pole behind her, the old Roman symbol given to freed slaves. The image carried obvious meaning for the young republic, and similar motifs had already turned up on several state coppers and the 1793 half cent. Wright died of yellow fever on September 11, 1793. He had been at the Mint only a matter of weeks. Robert Scot, formally appointed Chief Engraver that November, inherited the project and cut the working dies for the rest of the series. How much Scot actually changed Wright's original concept is hard to say, and Breen spent considerable space on the question without fully resolving it, but the basic composition of the design held steady through 1796.