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Patience Lovell Wright (1725 – March 23, 1786) was the first recognized American-born sculptor. She chiefly created wax figures of people. She loved to write poetry and was also a painter. ==Biography== Patience Lovell 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.〔("Patience Lovell Wright", Bordentown Historical Society. )〕 For years she had amused herself and her children by molding faces out of putty, bread dough, and wax. After her husband died in 1769, to support herself, her children and the new child on its way, she (working with her sister Rachel, who by then was also a widow) turned her pastime into a full-time occupation molding portraits in tinted wax, which was popular art form in colonial America. She had an "energetic wildness" when she worked for she loved the work she did. By 1770, Patience and Rachel had become successful enough to open a waxworks house in Philadelphia and another in New York City. The Manhattan outpost, on Queen Street, was the more successful of the two, but when fire ravaged the block in June 1771, all of Wright’s work was destroyed. After the fire on Manhattan Outpost she decided to relocate to London to pursue her trade there. She had acquired the public support of Benjamin Franklin through her acquaintance with his sister, Jane Mecom. Armed with a letter of introduction from Franklin, she was quickly accepted into London society, although her unorthodox comportment (she wore wooden shoes, and kissed members of both sexes and all classes, on both cheeks), caused her to be labeled "The Promethean Modeler". She was patronized by George III, and sculpted him and other members of British royalty and nobility, but fell from royal favor because of her open support for the colonial cause during the American Revolution. She sculpted wax figures of both loyalist and patriots. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Patience Wright」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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