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WRIGHT, MRS. PATIENCE. Born at Bordentown, New Jersey, 1725, of a Quaker family.  When left a widow, with three children to care for, she went to London, where she found a larger field for her art than she had in the United States, where she had already made a good reputation as a modeller in wax.  By reason of this change of residence she has often been called an English sculptress.

Although the imaginative and pictorial is not cultivated or even approved by Quakers, Patience Lovell, while still a child, and before she had seen works of art, was content only when supplied with dough, wax, or clay, from which she made figures of men and women.  Very early these figures became portraits of the people she knew best, and in the circle of her family and friends she was considered a genius.

Very soon after Mrs. Wright reached London she was fully employed.  She worked in wax, and her full-length portrait of Lord Chatham was placed in Westminster Abbey, protected by a glass case.  This attracted much attention, and the London journals praised the artist.  She made portraits of the King and Queen, who, attracted by her brilliant conversation, admitted her to an intimacy at Buckingham House, which could not then have been accorded to an untitled English woman.

[Illustration:  From a Copley Print.

THE SONG OF AGES

ETHEL WRIGHT]

Mrs. Wright made many portraits of distinguished people; but few, if any, of these can now be seen, although it is said that some of them have been carefully preserved by the families who possess them.

To Americans Mrs. Wright is interesting by reason of her patriotism, which amounted to a passion.  She is credited with having been an important source of information to the American leaders in the time of the Revolution.  In this she was frank and courageous, making no secret of her views.  She even ventured to reprove George III. for his attitude toward the Colonists, and by this boldness lost the royal favor.

She corresponded with Franklin, in Paris, and new appointments, or other important movements in the British army, were speedily known to him.

Washington, when he knew that Mrs. Wright wished to make a bust of him, replied in most flattering terms that he should think himself happy to have his portrait made by her.  Mrs. Wright very much desired to make likenesses of those who signed the Treaty of Peace, and of those who had taken a prominent part in making it.  She wrote:  “To shame the English king, I would go to any trouble and expense, and add my mite to the honor due to Adams, Jefferson, and others.”

Though so essentially American as a woman, the best of her professional life was passed in England, where she was liberally patronized and fully appreciated.  Dunlap calls her an extraordinary woman, and several writers have mentioned her power of judging the character of her visitors, in which she rarely made a mistake, and chose her friends with unusual intelligence.