The Painter's Fire
A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution
by Zara Anishanslin
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Pub Date Jul 01 2025 | Archive Date Jul 01 2025
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Description
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.
Zara Anishanslin is Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. She is the author of the award-winning Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World and has served as a historical consultant for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as “Hamilton: The Exhibition.”
Advance Praise
"If you thought the art history of the American Revolution meant old men in wigs silently sitting for their portraits, Zara Anishanslin’s outsized assembly of contrarian, conspiratorial, and colorful-in-every-sense characters will blow your mind." - Woody Holton, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution
"Truly a revelation. The lives of Prince Demah, Robert Edge Pine, and Patience Wright have long been hidden in plain sight, overshadowed by those of more familiar artists from their era like Gilbert Stuart and the Peale family. In The Painter's Fire, Zara Anishanslin skillfully brings to light the contributions of this defiant trio who supported the American Revolution from both sides of the Atlantic." - Flora Fraser, author of The Washingtons
"The Painter's Fire takes the new appreciation of the American Revolution as a transatlantic civil war into the realm of art, both high and popular. Suddenly we see women and people of African descent in vivid color. This is cutting-edge scholarship as much as it is a gripping narrative about innovative artists. Insisting that painters and sculptors were 'central to the making of revolution,' Zara Anishanslin reclaims patriotism for a diverse group of cosmopolitans." - David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley
"We know the American Revolution was fought with words and with arms. But with art? In her creative new book, Zara Anishanslin highlights how painting and sculpture could be surprisingly effective tools in the fight for freedom. No less importantly, she shows how artists of every stripe—men and women, the exiled and the enslaved—were passionately committed to the cause of American liberty." - Serena Zabin, author of The Boston Massacre: A Family History
"Zara Anishanslin skillfully imagines the lives of Prince Demah, Patience Wright, and Robert Edge Pine, combining detailed research on these largely forgotten artists with a broad look at their social and political contexts. Although little of their work survives—lost to us through neglect, accident, and condescension—their drive to create and to serve the cause of liberty reveal complexities of class, race, and international intrigue that deepen our understanding of the American Revolutionary period." - Erica Hirshler, Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780674290235 |
| PRICE | $32.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 400 |
