Patience Lovell Wright

Place: Oyster Bay

Born: 1725

Death: 1786

Biography:

Patience Wright (born Lovell; 1725 – March 23, 1786) was a sculptor of wax figures, and the first recognized American-born sculptor. She 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. 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. Contemporary physician Solomon Drowne mentions a visit to the waxworks in his journals. Wright's portraits were life-sized figures or busts with real clothing and glass eyes. They were modeled from life and were considered to be very lifelike. They were often placed in tableaux, illustrating the activities the portrayed individual might have undertaken in life. After many of her sculptures were destroyed in a fire in June 1771, Wright relocated to London, England. Through a relationship with Jane Mecom, sister of Benjamin Franklin, she made her entry into London society. Wright settled in the West End and set up a popular waxworks show of historical tableaux and celebrity wax figures. She was honored with an invitation to model King George III, and would go on to sculpt other members of British royalty and nobility. Although Wright is recorded as creating at least fifty-five works, only her full-length figure of Lord Chatham (William Pitt) is extant.