Patience Wright: Postrevolutionary Plans

Illustration of Wright modelling a
waxwork head in "Wonderful Magazine"

"Patience Write saw a great future for herself in America, a new nation in need of icons, and wrote to George Washington that she hoped to make a wax portrait of him, based on her son Joseph's study. Washington replied that it would be 'an honor done me and if your inclination to return to this country should overcome other considerations, youwill no doubt, meet a welcome reception from your numerous friends; among who, I should be proud to see a person so universally celebrated; and on whom Nature has bestowed such rare and uncommon gifts.' Using this letter as a reference, she now began to drum up business seeking to 'make the likeness of the five gentlemen who assisted at the signing of the peace that put an end to so bloody and dreadful a war.'

"While laying plans for a grand finale to her career, Wright kept in touch with John Adams, now the American ambassador in London. She haunted the embassy, supplying Adams with inside tips about trade with Ireland and other tidbits. It was on returning from such a visit in 1786 that she fell and subsequently died of the injuries at age sixty-one.

Wright's flamboyant personality threatens to overshadow her art, yet according to contemporary accounts the realism of her figures was extraordinary. The sculptor sent many pieces to her sister Rachel, which were later bought by an exhibitor who showed them with his own work until a fire destroyed them. Only two of the fifty-five perishable waxes remain. Even formerly attributed small wax portrait medallions have since been reattributed - the one of George Washington to her son Joseph.

Only an authenticated full-length figure of William Pitt in Westminster Abbey's Islip Chapel remains to give a substantial idea of her style and working methods. When the statue was cleaned in 1935, the keeper of the muniments of the Abbey found the realism 'striking and convincing' - even the hands were 'veined and tinted by coloured underslips with hairs painted on the surface.' The wax head is attached to a wooden trunk with cardboard and glue-filled papier-mache strips, and the forearms are also cardboard and glue. The figure is supported at the back by an iron that screws into the wooden trunk.

A legend in the United States and England, Wright received obituaries that claimed her for both lands. The 'New York Daily Advertiser' wrote on 16 May: 'America has lost in... the celebrated Mrs. Wright... a warm and sincere friend, as well as one of her first ornaments to the arts... Those brave fellows who during the late war were fortunate enough to escape from the arms of tyranny and take sanctuary under her roof, will join us in lamenting her loss.'"

(Excerpts from "American Women Sculptors" by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein.)