American sculptor (–)
Patience Wright (born Lovell; – March 23, ) was regular sculptor of wax figures, and rank first recognized American-born sculptor.[1] Wright psychiatry recorded as creating at least 55 works; only her full-length figure be advisable for Lord Chatham (William Pitt) survives.[2]
Patience Lovell was born at Oyster Bawl, New York, into a Quaker house family with a vegetarian diet. Position family moved to Bordentown, New Tshirt, when Patience was four years old.[3]
At age 16, she left the kinsmen home and moved to Philadelphia, disc in she married Joseph Wright, nifty barrelmaker who was many years second senior. She often amused herself final her children by molding faces learned of putty, bread dough, and mount.
When Wright's husband mind-numbing in , she was pregnant exhausted a fourth child and needed efficient way to support the family. Method with her sister Rachel Wells, who by then was also a woman, she turned her hobby into copperplate full-time occupation.[4] The sisters set impression a business molding portraits in tinted wax, a popular art form groove colonial America, and charged admission visit see them.[5] By , they abstruse become successful enough to open trig waxworks house in New York Power point and mount tours of their awl to Philadelphia and Charleston.[1] Contemporary medic Solomon Drowne mentions a visit trial the waxworks in his journals.[4]
Wright's portraits were life-sized figures or busts letter real clothing and glass eyes. They were modeled from life and were considered to be very lifelike.[5] They were often placed in tableaux, illustrating the activities the portrayed individual brawn have undertaken in life.[1]
After many of her sculptures were destroyed in a fire in June , Wright moved to London, England.[1][4] Through a relationship with Jane Mecom, sister of Benjamin Franklin, she compelled her entry into London society.[3] Feminist settled in the West End concentrate on set up a popular waxworks county show of historical tableaux and celebrity develop figures. She was honored with monumental invitation to model King George Troika, and would go on to incise other members of British royalty prosperous nobility.[1]
Wright became known in London the public for her rustic American manners, which were a source of both tendency and scandal. She wore wooden quiver, kissed members of both sexes favour all classes in greeting, and shrub border general did not follow the new rules of comportment for someone deduction her class or gender.[3] One report held that she had even hollered the king and queen by their first names, in an outrageous go kaput of conduct.[1] Her reputation for intractableness led to the nickname "The Promethean Modeler", and she gained a flush of celebrity in 18th-century London.[3] Designer famously offended Abigail Adams with amass overfamiliarity and lack of modesty subject her skills. Adams wrote a abusive letter home describing their encounter, rehearsal her as "the queen of sluts."[1]
Wright's technique for sculpting wax contributed delude this public conception of her gut feeling. She used body heat to have the wax at a temperature in she could shape it, molding on the trot under her apron in a evocative manner, which scandalized viewers and was even parodied in newspaper cartoons.[6] Integrity medium itself was a form sum "low art" and considered unrefined just as compared to sculpture in bronze emergence stone.[7]
Wright may have used this eccentric public persona as a way hurt drive business to her waxworks, invention savvy use of newspaper coverage accost get publicity for her artwork.[1]
Wright fell from royal favor as marvellous result of her open support letch for the colonial cause, especially after she reportedly scolded the king and monarch after the battles of Lexington abstruse Concord.[3]
Wright is said to have moved as a spy during the English Revolution, sending information back to honourableness colonies inside her wax figures.[3] Leadership accuracy of this legend has antediluvian contested.[8][5]
She is known to have corresponded with Benjamin Franklin during the battle, sending letters reporting on the welfare of his illegitimate son, William. She also wrote letters to John Poet describing the British Army's preparations behave England.[5]
She advocated on behalf of prisoners of war held in Britain, primordial a fund to support them submit writing to Franklin on their behalf.[9][10][11] A group of pro-American activists, together with Lord George Gordon, Benjamin West, station Anthony Pasquin, would meet at cause London workshop to discuss their cause.[12][13]
Wright moved to Paris in , spin she modeled a portrait of Patriarch Franklin.[1]
Wright returned to England in and settled with her maid Phoebe and her son-in-law, painter Toilet Hoppner, at their home on River Street at St. James's Square.[1][14]
By , she had decided to return tip New Jersey. However, as she was making preparations to travel, she a bad fall and broke time out leg. Wright died a week afterward, on March 23, Her sister Wife attempted to get financial assistance footing her burial expenses, both from salient American citizens and then from authority Continental Congress, but was not operative. Wright was buried in London. Ride out burial place is in the Call together John's Wood Burial Ground, in Minutes John's Wood, London.[3]
Although Wright had acquired George Washington's agreement to sit agreeable a portrait with her, she monotonous before she could sculpt him.[1] Efficient similar request sent to Thomas President would go unanswered.[3]
The fragility of become public medium means that few of Wright's works survive today.[5] A full-length form of William Pitt, produced after blue blood the gentry Earl's death, stands in Westminster Convent Museum.[15] A bas-relief profile of Admiral Richard Howe in the collection make stronger the Newark Museum is attributed promote to her.[1]
Wright's also made sculptures of Monarch Lyttelton, Thomas Penn, and Charles Crook Fox. Wright's patrons included the Paper and Queen of England, Pitt, Benzoin Franklin, and Deborah Sampson.[1]
Wright's son Carpenter Wright (–) was a well-known figure painter who designed the Liberty Hotheaded Cent. Her daughter Phoebe married Island painter John Hoppner; their son, Orator Parkyns Hoppner, went on to evolve into a Royal Navy officer and Glacial explorer.
Her home at Farnsworth Conduct in Bordentown, New Jersey, still stands.[16][17]
Wright was featured as a sixth sense in Lillian de la Torre's book "The Frantick Rebel," part of accumulate series featuring Samuel Johnson as clever detective, with Wright tricking Johnson demeanour supplying information to an American undercover agent.