Patience Wright: Taking London by Storm

Profile bust of Benjamin Franklin
attributed to Patience Wright, ca. 1775

"Patience Wright sailed to England in 1772, intent upon making a name for herself in the great center of art and power. Bearing a letter from Benjamin Franklin's sister, she visited the statesman and showed him a bust of his old friend Cadwallader Colden. Franklin, astonished and delighted, consented to pose for a bust. He wrote back to his sister saying, 'She has shown me some of her work which appears extraordinary. I shall recommend her among my friends if she chooses to work here.'

Indeed Patience chose the best part of town near Buckingham Palace, amidst the ateliers of such renowned artists as the American, Benjamin West, painter to the king and a Quaker, who soon became her friend. Lesley Parker wrote, 'She could not have made a more propitious move. In the metropolis of empire she felt at home and established herself immediately as a personality to be reckoned with. Tall, broad of beam, with sharp features and a sharp tongue, she brought to the precious society of the time an arresting candour and zealous hospitality.'

To the sophisticated nobility who began to crowd into her exhibition rooms to see her marvelous waxworks, she was a droll original who brought to their jaded world a fresh vision of an Arcadian land. Even the liberties she took - kissing the men on both cheeks in typical Quaker greeting or speaking to her 'betters' as equals - were greeted with amusement as the symbols of a new order of being.

But her exhibition was more than a sensational sideshow - it was something of a propaganda statement. In addition to the portrait of Franklin, Wright modeled several Britons sympathetic to the American cause: William Pitt, who opposed the Stamp Act; Lady Macaulay, another supporter of the colonies; Viscount Augustus Keppel, a British admiral opposed to the American war; and the Prince of Wales, who was hostile to his father.

Be that as it may, the King and Queen induced her to do their portraits as well. Soon she was striding in and out of Buckingham House, modeling the king and queen in wax and addressing them as 'George' and 'Charlotte.' The appearance of the royal busts in her exhibition gave it the ultimate cachet."

To be continued

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