The Painter's Fire

A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution

Zara Anishanslin

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674300378
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: History

Longlist, Cundill History Prize

Told through the lives of three remarkable artists devoted to the pursuit of liberty, an illuminating new history of the ideals that fired the American Revolution.

The war that we now call the American Revolution was not only fought in the colonies with muskets and bayonets. On both sides of the Atlantic, artists armed with paint, canvas, and wax played an integral role in forging revolutionary ideals. Zara Anishanslin charts the intertwined lives of three such figures who dared to defy the British monarchy: Robert Edge Pine, Prince Demah, and Patience Wright. From London to Boston, from Jamaica to Paris, from Bath to Philadelphia, these largely forgotten patriots boldly risked their reputations and their lives to declare independence.

Mostly excluded from formal political or military power, these artists and their circles fired salvos against the king on the walls of the Royal Academy as well as on the battlefields of North America. They used their talents to inspire rebellion, define American patriotism, and fashion a new political culture, often alongside more familiar revolutionary figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Phillis Wheatley. Pine, an award-winning British artist rumored to be of African descent, infused massive history paintings with politics and eventually emigrated to the young United States. Demah, the first identifiable enslaved portrait painter in America, was Pine's pupil in London before self-emancipating and enlisting to fight for the Patriot cause. And Wright, a Long Island–born wax sculptor who became a sensation in London, loudly advocated for revolution while acting as an informal patriot spy.

Illuminating a transatlantic and cosmopolitan world of revolutionary fervor, The Painter's Fire reveals an extraordinary cohort whose experiences testify to both the promise and the limits of liberty in the founding era.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note On Terminology
• Prologue: Revolutionary Portraits Lost at Sea
• Introduction: Transatlantic Patriots
• 1. Daphny’s Son
• 2. A Tarred and Feathered Horse
• 3. Black London
• 4. Black Genius
• 5. A Colonial Woman Takes London By Storm
• 6. Black Boston
• 7. Ladies of Genius
• 8. American Intelligence
• 9. Bayonets Through the Heart
• 10. American Liberty
• 11. Benjamin Franklin’s Army
• 12. Crafting Freedom
• 13. Artists At War With the King
• 14. Queen of Sluts, Ladies of Liberty
• Epilogue: Daphny’s Cloak
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Credits
• Index