Zara Anishanslin — The Painter's Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution - with Kevin Butterfield

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.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780674290235?ic_referral=q6MQvWnuml2rBvh55ORiozd7qbNDinqyQTdhEKKbBtwwM3tXdTPzM-yyUJct1qIQdl52J9TD7zTt3NpaxdAqNIcA-Sd3ckAabPhX_pNih3sRbfhqLB2p92VZnbZozmL5Zk2WDboZara 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."Anishanslin is in conversation with Kevin Butterfield, a historian of the early United States and serves as Director of the John W. Kluge Center, the main center for research and scholarly programs at the Library of Congress.