Patience Wright Lovell was born at Oyster Bay, New York, into a Quaker farm family with a vegetarian diet.
21 Facts About Patience Wright
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The family moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, when Patience Wright was four years old.
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When Patience Wright's husband died in 1769, she was pregnant with a fourth child and needed a way to support the family.
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Patience Wright's portraits were life-sized figures or busts with real clothing and glass eyes.
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Patience Wright settled in the West End and set up a popular waxworks show of historical tableaux and celebrity wax figures.
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Patience Wright was honored with an invitation to model King George III, and would go on to sculpt other members of British royalty and nobility.
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Patience Wright became known in London society for her rustic American manners, which were a source of both fascination and scandal.
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Patience Wright famously offended Abigail Adams with her overfamiliarity and lack of modesty about her skills.
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Patience Wright used body heat to keep the wax at a temperature where she could shape it, molding it under her apron in a suggestive manner, which scandalized viewers and was even parodied in newspaper cartoons.
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Patience Wright fell from royal favor as a result of her open support for the colonial cause, especially after she reportedly scolded the king and queen after the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord.
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Patience Wright is said to have worked as a spy during the American Revolution, sending information back to the colonies inside her wax figures.
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Patience Wright is known to have corresponded with Benjamin Franklin during the war, sending letters reporting on the health of his illegitimate son, William.
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Patience Wright wrote letters to John Dickinson describing the British Army's preparations in England.
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Patience Wright advocated on behalf of prisoners of war held in Britain, starting a fund to support them and writing to Franklin on their behalf.
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Patience Wright moved to Paris in 1780, where she modeled a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.
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Patience Wright returned to England in 1782 and settled with her daughter Phoebe and her son-in-law, painter John Hoppner, at their home on Charles Street at St James's Square.
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The fragility of her medium means that few of Patience Wright's works survive today.
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Patience Wright's made sculptures of Lord Lyttelton, Thomas Penn, and Charles James Fox.
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Patience Wright's patrons included the King and Queen of England, Pitt, Benjamin Franklin, and Deborah Sampson.
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Patience Wright's son Joseph Patience Wright was a well-known portrait painter who designed the Liberty Cap Cent.
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Patience Wright was featured as a character in Lillian de la Torre's story "The Frantick Rebel," part of her series featuring Samuel Johnson as a detective, with Patience Wright tricking Johnson into supplying information to an American spy.