Patience Wright

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Patience Lovell Wright (born 1725, Bordentown, New Jersey; died March 23, 1786, London) was the first recognized American-born sculptor. She chiefly created wax figures of people.

Wright was born into a Quaker farm family and married Joseph Wright in 1748. For years, she had amused herself and her five children by molding faces out of putty, bread dough, and wax. After her husband died in 1769, her pastime became a full-time occupation as she began earning a living from molding portraits in tinted wax.

In 1772, Wright traveled to England and opened a successful wax museum. Wright became known as the "Promethean modeller," for her New World egalitarianism and often coarse speech as well as her artwork. She was patronized by George III, and sculpted him and other members of British royalty and nobility, but fell from royal favor because of her open support for the colonial cause during the American Revolution. It is commonly believed that Wright provided her rebellious former compatriots with intelligence related to British war preparations. Wright's sculpture of friend William Pitt still stands in Westminster Abbey.

Patience Wright's son Joseph Wright (1756-1793) was a well-known portrait painter, and her daughter Phoebe married British painter John Hoppner.

Her home at 100 Farnsworth Avenue in Bordentown, New Jersey still stands.[1]

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