WRIGHT, PATIENCE

born 1725, Bordentown, N.J. died March 23, 1786, London, Eng. ne Patience Lovell American modeler of wax figures who was well known originally in the British American colonies and later a person of some celebrity in England. Patience Lovell was of a prosperous Quaker farm family. In 1748 she married Joseph Wright. Little is known of her life from then until 1769, when she was left a widow with five children. She had from childhood been artistically inclined, and she began modeling in wax, within a short time creating a traveling waxwork exhibit featuring remarkably skillful portraits of well-known public figures. In February 1772 Wright sailed to England, where, in part through Benjamin Franklin's help, she soon created a new exhibit of actors, political figures, nobles, and others that became highly popular. The attraction of her work lay partly in its novelty (she preceded Madame Tussaud by 30 years), partly in her skill, and partly in her own blunt, eccentric personality. (She was, for example, said to have addressed the king and queen as George and Charlotte.) During the Revolutionary War, Wright opened her London home to American prisoners of war and corresponded frequently with Franklin in Paris, although there seems to be little evidence for the later belief that she passed on to him military intelligence gleaned from her contacts in London society. She also may have corresponded with members of the Continental Congress, perhaps, according to one legend, concealing her letters in wax figures consigned to her sister in Philadelphia. In 1780 Wright went to Paris to open a wax museum, but found little opportunity. The painter, wax modeler, and diemaker Joseph Wright (175693) was her son.