Revolutionary Artz

This week we will honor Patience Lovell Wright.  

She was a sculptor but more importantly she was a spy during the Revolutionary War.

Let us back up a bit. She was born in 1725 in Oyster Bay New York later moving to New Jersey when she was 4. Now move forward a bit. To amuse her children patience would mold faces out of bread dough, putty and wax. She became very good at it.  After her husband died she started creating tinted wax sculptures on commission.  She made a good living for her and her children but after a fire destroyed her waxworks factory in New York in 1772 she decided to move to England and start a new life.

While in London she established a museum where the dignitaries of the times were celebrated and her wax sculptures of them were displayed. She was a success and soon King George III was her patron. This had her often at court sculpting King George and those he surrounded himself with.

As talk of war against her beloved America whispered through court Patience listened. She would write secretive notes about military plans and tuck them inside wax figures of patriots. Those wax figures, along with figures of loyalists would then be shipped back to America, where other American sympathizers would get the sculptures and their secret messages into the hands of the revolutionaries.

Patience Lovell Wright the first recognized American-born sculptor who also wrote poetry, painted and was an American spy in London.

Revolutionary Artz!