Patience Wright

Patience Wright (born Lovell; 1725 – March 23, 1786) was a sculptor of wax figures, and the first recognized American-born sculptor. Wright is recorded as creating at least 55 works; only her full-length figure of Lord Chatham (William Pitt) survives.

Biography

Early life

Patience Lovell was born at Oyster Bay, New York, into a Quaker farm family with a vegetarian diet. The family moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, when Patience was four years old.

At age 16, she left the family home and moved to Philadelphia, where in 1748 she married Joseph Wright, a barrelmaker who was many years her senior. She often amused herself and her children by molding faces out of putty, bread dough, and wax.

Turn to sculpture

When Wright's husband died in 1769, she was pregnant with a fourth child and needed a way to support the family. Working with her sister Rachel Wells, who by then was also a widow, she turned her hobby into a full-time occupation. The sisters set up a business molding portraits in tinted wax, a popular art form in colonial America, and charged admission to see them. By 1770, they had become successful enough to open a waxworks house in New York City and mount tours of their work to Philadelphia and Charleston. The medium itself was a form of "low art" and considered unrefined when compared to sculpture in bronze or stone.

Wright may have used this unconventional public persona as a way to drive business to her waxworks, making savvy use of newspaper coverage to get publicity for her artwork. A group of pro-American activists, including Lord George Gordon, Benjamin West, and Anthony Pasquin, would meet at her London workshop to discuss their cause.

Wright moved to Paris in 1780, where she modeled a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

By 1785, she had decided to return to New Jersey. However, as she was making preparations to travel, she suffered a bad fall and broke her leg. Wright died a week later, on March 23, 1786. Her sister Rachel attempted to get financial assistance for her burial expenses, both from prominent American citizens and then from the Continental Congress, but was not successful. Wright was buried in London. Her burial place is in the St John's Wood Burial Ground, in St John's Wood, London. A bas-relief profile of Admiral Richard Howe in the collection of the Newark Museum is attributed to her.

In literature Wright was featured as a character in Lillian de la Torre's story "The Frantick Rebel," part of her series featuring Samuel Johnson as a detective, with Wright tricking Johnson into supplying information to an American spy.

In Season 2 of 'Turn: Washington's Spies, Patience Wright is seen scultping King George III, though her actress appears much younger than Wright would've been in 1777, 52. Wright is also murdered by the King's agents in the episode.