“The Painter’s Fire” Book Talk

Join us for a book talk with author Zara Anishanslin on Thursday, November 13th at 5:30 PM at La Salle University Art Museum.

The American Revolution was more cosmopolitan, geographically broad, and diverse than often remembered. The familiar image of a patriot—a white man writing pamphlets or leading battles—tells only part of the story, and not always the most interesting part.

In The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, July 1, 2025), historian and art historian Zara Anishanslin uncovers the vital role of patriot artists, women, Black individuals, and people of mixed race who shaped the revolution through art, espionage, and activism. Working across America, London, and Paris, they inspired rebellion and helped forge a new political culture all without ever lifting a musket.

Told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable figures—Robert Edge Pine, Prince Demah, and Patience Wright, The Painter’s Fire reveals how artists used portraits, wax sculptures, and public performance to challenge the British monarchy and imagine a new world. Pine, an award-winning British painter rumored to be of African descent, eventually emigrated to the U.S. to document its founding. Demah, his formerly enslaved student, became the first identifiable Black portraitist in America and later fought for the Patriot cause. Wright, a Long Island–born sculptor and outspoken revolutionary, became a sensation in London while also spying for the colonies.

Excluded from formal military or political power, these artists wielded creativity as a weapon, shaping public sentiment, smuggling intelligence, and giving visual form to revolutionary ideals. Their lives and work, often in conversation with figures like Benjamin Franklin and Phillis Wheatley, show that the Revolution’s most powerful battles weren’t always fought on the field.

Illuminating a transatlantic network of resistance and revealing the paradoxes of liberty and slavery at the heart of America’s founding, The Painter’s Fire expands our understanding of what it meant to be a patriot and who we remember when we tell the story of America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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.”