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Zara Anishanslin, "The Painter's Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution" (Harvard UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Limu Emu and Doug.
- [00:03]
Marshall Po
Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [00:18]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [00:21]
Marshall Po
Cut the camera.
- [00:21]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings.
- [00:28]
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [00:29]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [00:30]
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- [00:45]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Let's go.
- [00:46]
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And young Mason Moore got more done quickly uploading HD product demos and video conferencing. Without freesight, the numbers look good.
- [00:53]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Brad, you're on mute.
- [00:54]
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- [01:01]
Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:07]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very excited today because we get to talk about, I think, quite an interesting book titled the Painter's A Forgotten History of the Artist who Championed the American Revolution, published by Harvard University Press in 2025. Now, any book that has forgotten history in the title or subtitle is always intriguing. And I think our discussion is very much going to show how some of the people going to be talking about are not that famous, necessarily, but maybe they should be, because they're really interesting. They're doing all sorts of things around the American Revolution. They're doing it in what becomes America. They're also doing it in England, where that was not always the most popular thing. And they were doing this in ways that we might not think of as being revolutionary. These are not. I mean, they kind of are, but they're not like, really politicians. They're not sort of the leaders that later on go on to be in charge of things. And they are operating, as the title suggests, in terms of paint and art and other sorts of mediums. And yet it's very political. They know that they're being political. They're very much trying to achieve political aims. And all of this becomes really interesting to understand. So I'm very pleased to get to have this conversation with, of course, the author of the book, Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen, who is here to tell us all about her work. Zara, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [03:32]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me, Miranda. I'm so excited to talk with you and to get a chance to have your listeners hear more about the book.
- [03:42]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, I am obviously also excited to talk more about the book, but before we get too far into the details, can you please introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this?
- [03:52]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Yes. So I gave myself a rather goofy but very explanatory title of the historian with a thing for things. And I think that sums up my intellectual interests pretty nicely, because what I like to do is tell stories about the past that are inspired by the material world. And one of the reasons that I chose to make that the focus of my intellectual career is that I think that the material world allows us to uncover exactly these hidden and forgotten histories, because the written archive so often historically has privileged elite people, and particularly white men. And I find that looking at the material world also allows me to uncover stories of people who've historically been marginalized in a lot of our traditional histories, notably women and people of color. And one of the things that inspired me to write this book is that it allowed me to tell a history of the American Revolution, that first of all is transatlantic. And I think that's not something that's emphasized, certainly, on the American side of the pond, but also to tell stories of the American Revolution about these forgotten patriots who were just as ardently in support of the cause as white men like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but who, as you hinted at, did so participated politically in very unusual ways. And in part it was because they were from these historically marginalized communities that meant by default, they couldn't run for Continental Congress or, you know, lead the Continental army, but instead they used their creative vision and they really, their passionate attachment to liberty to craft this really idiosyncratic politic through things like art and espionage.
- [05:42]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I'm glad you mentioned idiosyncratic, because that is very much a way in which you start the book. And I think it's really quite an evocative moment that I'd love to start our conversation about the book with it as well. You tell us about a painting right at the beginning of the book. You describe it for us. Why is this an effective way to start this story with the threads you've just laid out? And can you tell us a bit about the painting?
- [06:04]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Absolutely. And I so wish that I could show everyone the painting, but part of the fact that I can't is one of the reasons I chose to open. Open with it. Because one of the points that I'm making in my book is that a lot of the art that was inspiring people and created during the revolution does not survive today. And what opens the book is an example of just that. So that was one reason I chose this painting. The other is the subject matter. And I think once I describe it a bit, your listeners will have no problem grasping why it was such a dramatic way to open the story I'm telling. So in 1780, the Royal Academy of Art in London had its first annual exhibition in its newly refurbished, fabulous Somerset House. So the patronage of the King and Queen allowed them to really renovate this space into a fantastic gallery for the exhibition. And the entire second floor is an open gallery, and it's where the paintings were hung. And there are hundreds of paintings in the Royal Academy show. And an important point to make about these paintings is that they are selected by a jury. So you can't just sort of trot into the Royal Academy and decide to hang your painting on the wall. There's a selection process. And one of the paintings that became one of the most remarked upon that year was by one of the first Americans to study at the Royal Academy, a guy called Joseph Wright, Now, Joseph Wright, came from a rather famous family. His mother, Patience Wright, was an American wax sculptor. So think Madame Tussaud, before Madame Tussaud, and she had come from America to England in the early 1770s, operated a wildly popular wax museum that showcased real people, living and dead, which was unusual for the time. Mostly other wax museums did sort of imaginative mythologies and biblical tableau. But. So she was famous for her wax museum, and she was also famous for the way in which she created her wax figures. Allegedly, she would look at the person whose head she was modeling into wax, have this conversation with them. She had these very penetrating eyes, apparently, and the whole time she was working, she would have the wax head under her skirts, and then when she was satisfied it was done, she would whip it out from underneath. It would be completely formed. And obviously, this is astounding because it's. Her wax figures were noted for being very historically realistic, and it also was more than a bit sexually titillating. So people absolutely thought that she was this very charismatic, amazing figure, which made her own likeness just as well known as the people whose likenesses she'd cast in wax. So what Joseph Wright's painting of his mother showed was a portrait of her holding a newly finished wax head on her lap, while two bust figures looked down on her. And it was just called, you know, something like a portrait of Mrs. Wright modeling in wax. But here's the thing. What she held in her lap wasn't just any head. It was the head, the decapitated head of King Charles I, who, of course, is England's king, famously executed by his own people in the English Civil War. And the busts that were looking down were King George III and Queen Charlotte. So this is very much a portrait of regicide and the implied threat of regicide. And what's made it amazing that this was a show that was, you know, under the patronage of the King and Queen. New portraits of the King and Queen by Benjamin west were also on display. The King and Queen themselves were there and saw this portrait. So I think the fact that it's 1780, five years into the war, and here you have this very. What was seen as treasonous by some people, and people wrote about it in newspapers and complained, but the fact is, other people saluted it and said, this is an amazing, entertaining nod about constitutional liberties. And I was like, how astounding that this portrait made it into the Royal academy show in 1780 at all. And then how astounding that people supported the message in London, in the heart of what Americans would see as enemy territory at this point. And it was a really great reminder that this war was always divisive. It was a civil war that was fought on both sides of the Atlantic. And that art was a mechanism that was used to inspire protest and allegiance and make a political statement. Now, the reason I said that this portrait can't be seen is because Joseph Wright, a few years later, was in Paris working with the Wright's family friend, Benjamin Franklin, to get some patronage for art projects in the United States of America. And so, with Benjamin Franklin's help, he set off across the Atlantic on a ship called the Argo, and he had a commission to do a portrait of George Washington. So a very, very cool moment in this young artist's life. And just a few days out from their destination, they hit a snowstorm at sea, and they ended up crashing on the rocks on the coast of Maine. And although the passengers were hauled to shore safely, most of the cargo, including Wright's paintings of his mother, of Benjamin Franklin, all the paintings that he brought with him, were lost at sea. And so I took it as a really fantastic reminder of the fact that this is an example of this art from the Revolutionary era disappearing, A reminder that what we see in museums is only a very small fraction of what was once created and seen. But metaphorically speaking, even though this art was submerged and this history has been submerged as well, just because things are under the water doesn't mean they're not there. And much as we can retrieve items from a shipwreck, we can retrieve these lost stories from the past. And so I thought that this was just an absolute incredible painting, both the painting itself and then the trajectory of what happened to it to open this book.
- [11:46]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
It's a great story in and of itself. So fabulous way to open the interview, too. Thank you for that. And, yeah, that description of it in the book and that you've given here, I really wish we could see it. I mean, it's so not subtle. It's such a clear political point. There's no sort of illusion here of interpretation. Like, look, here's a decapitated king's head you are currently fighting. Like, I mean, it's just so blatant. And so all these sorts of questions of, like, how do we get to the point where it's in the biggest salon and everyone is seeing it? I mean, the king and Queen are seeing it. There's so many kind of, like, steps that would have to happen to get to something that seems so unexpected. And I think that's true, not just with this one painting, but of so many of the historical threads you bring to life in this book. So if we move to talking about one of the other key figures in terms of unexpected steps, we've got a woman named Daphne, who sounds pretty entertaining in and of herself, who ends up with a son who becomes a professional painter in London, despite the fact that that is not at all where Daphne's life starts or suggests that her son's would. So can you help us trace that multiple sort of roller coaster of steps to get to that point of him being a professional painter in London despite where they start?
- [13:07]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm so glad. It sounds as though Daphne reached across the centuries and captured your imagination just as she did mine. She really is one of these just vividly, vividly evocative figures. And her fortitude amazes me. And so I was very glad that I could open the first chapter of the book by discussing her, because she has this incredible story. She was born in Africa and stolen from Africa as a young girl, brought to New England where she was enslaved, and she remained in Massachusetts for the rest of her life. And despite this fact, even as an old woman, when she was petitioning or others were petitioning the state of Massachusetts on her behalf for help with her destitution because she died in poverty, she was very deliberate, and they were very deliberate about reminding everyone that she was from Africa. And she made the point about retaining ties to her African heritage in how she named her son. So her son was called Prince Dima. And this is very unusual to have a double name for enslaved people. And the name Dima itself is a West African surname. It's also a girl's name in Islamic traditions. So whether that was Daphne's first name or her surname, we don't know. But the fact is she held onto her African heritage and she gave this name to her son as a reminder of it. And we know that it meant a lot to him as well, because they were enslaved by a family called the Barneses. And Christian and Henry Barnes were a husband and wife couple who owned Daphne, but sold away her son Prince at some point when he was very young, probably to Christian Barnes brother. And at at Daphne's behest, she sort of said, hey, my son Prince, even though he's been out of the household and he's been working as a mariner for many years. Did you know he's a really great artist? And here's a sample of what he could do. And so Daphne really pushed and prodded to get Christian and Henry Barnes to purchase her son back into the household and very unusually, to serve as his art patrons. But you can tell because from Christian Barnes's letters, that it is Daphne and Prince himself who are pushing his talent into their notice. And that Daphne is visibly happier to be reunited with her, with her son. And as Christian Barnes puts it, she seems much more reconciled to her state of slavery since he's back in the household. So you get this impression that Daphne sort of alternately charmed and cajoled her way into getting Christian Barnes to purchase her son back into the household. And then what happens, as you say, is this very unusual path, which again, I think speaks to the fortitude and creativity of Daphne and her son, Prince Dima, because they end up getting the Barneses to take Prince Dima to London to get professional portrait training. Because John Singleton Copley in Boston won't train Prince Dima on account of his race. He's, of course, of African descent. But in London, they find a man called Robert Edge Pine, who's an award winning British painter connected to the society of artists and from a. A family of multiple generations of well connected artists. And he agrees to. To train Prince for no fee on account of his genius, as he says. And so here you have this man born to a woman stolen from Africa as a young girl, enslaved in Massachusetts, who somehow convinces their enslavers to allow Prince to travel to London to get his training. And then he comes back from London and actually sets up shop as our first identifiable enslaved portrait painter, who's a professional portrait painter in Boston. And when the Barneses eventually, who were Loyalists, free the country and go back to England because, among other things, a horse is tarred and feathered to send them a message of fright from the patriots. Prince Dima stays in Boston, as does Daphne, and they both drop the name Barnes and use Dima as their surname. And so I think it's a remarkable story of tenacity and Daphne's determination to hold on to her African heritage, but also to make the best possible life for her son, despite the overwhelming, you know, structural oppression they find themselves living in as enslaved people.
- [17:42]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's a lot of determination being shown there for her and for her son. Right. Two generations that are being impacted by it. But the discussion of Prince Dima and what he is able to gain in terms of skill and business opportunity as an enslaved person really intrigued me thinking about, for example, Phillis Wheatley, who is perhaps maybe a little bit better known. I don't Know, if that's just because she often works in different medium that I might be more familiar with. But how does her professional development, especially given that she also was in London for a bit, compare to Dima's in terms of navigating the structural constraints in terms of race, in terms of dealing with white enslavers, kind of encouraging them in kind of odd ways, but also, obviously, with lots of strings attached. What comparisons can we understand there?
- [18:32]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Yeah, I think it's a great question because there are so many interesting parallels and connections between the life of Phillis Wheatley and the life of Prince Dima. And one of the reasons I like to highlight this is that when Prince Dima comes back to Boston, he sets up shop painting portraits for fees. You know, a professional painter, he is working out of a shop on King street operated by a man who becomes a patriot, who's called John McClane. He's a watchmaker. And the reason I mention this is that John McClane's shop was within shouting distance of where the Wheatley family lived. They all. This was all near the scene of the Boston Massacre in front of the State House. And so here you have this. This man who was born enslaved and yet is able to make his creative talents known to his enslavers and through the persuasive tactics of himself and his mother, get professional training for himself in London, which is hard for most white colonial painters to do, much less. Much less an enslaved man of African descent, and then come back and have this. This profession and eventually become emancipated because of the political circumstances, but where the parallels to Phillis Wheatley are not just their geographic proximity and their connections, the fact that they're operating in the same time at the same place. But Phillis Wheatley also cannot get the support for her art to be furthered in Boston. She cannot raise enough money to have a book of poems published, despite her white enslavers, every efforts on her behalf and her own efforts on her behalf. And she also goes to London, and it is only in London that she has the patronage of people like the Countess of Huntington that allow her the financial wherewithal to get her book of poems published. And so they both have this really interesting life where they are enslaved in Massachusetts, grow up to be these, you know, creative talents who were recognized by their white enslavers as having this innate genius and then having white enslavers who very unusually, are willing to go to these lengths to foster their talents. And so I think it's very Indicative of the very complex relationships that enslavers and enslaved sometimes had with people in New England households in particular. But then sadly, they both, despite their professional artistic successes, they both die in states of pretty much poverty and because of their circumstances, are not able to achieve what other white artists at the same time period are. But one of the reasons I like to connect them in this book is that their shared geographic proximity and their similar stories, I think really remind us that we should stop talking about creative black geniuses in the past as these sort of extraordinary and unique figures, because they are extraordinary, but they're not unique. And I think doing justice to the fact that there are many enslaved people who are talented and creative and just weren't allowed to pursue their talents as they would have liked to have done because they're enslaved. So it's not because they're not talented. And you know, this is, this is one of the tropes that people like Thomas Jefferson are trying to push to prove racial inferiority on the part of African descended people. And it's just not true. And the fact that within, you know, what we would call today a few blocks of one another, we find not one, but two creative geniuses who are recognized as such in London, the artistic capital of the British Empire, is a fantastic reminder of the fact that there are people like Phillis Wheatley and Prince Dima who are not one offs. They are extraordinary, but they need to be folded into this larger story.
- [22:11]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And this kind of nuance is exactly the sort of thing that makes us so intrigued by forgotten histories. Right. To add these back in, but you mentioned there the fact that they were well known at the time, that they were considered skilled and, you know, could have whole careers with these things. So we should probably actually talk a little bit more about what they actually did, like what was their art and what kind of impact it had. So can you maybe give us some examples from Dima, from Wheatley, from the rites that we spoke about right at the beginning? The portrait you told us about the beginning is really quite obviously a sort of political way of using art to advance things. Like what was Prince Dima doing on that front? What was Phillis Wheatley doing on that front? What were some other examples of ways in which art was being used by these people for political purposes, both while they were in London and when they were on the other side of the ocean?
- [23:02]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Prince Dima's art is the hardest to identify as overtly political. Just because so little of his art that we know from archival sources, he did survives in a known form. So I'm convinced that there are more portraits by him, including a self portrait, which we know he did, that survive in, you know, New England attics and basements or something, just have not been discovered yet. So if anyone listening knows something, please reach out. But I do think that his art. I think the. The fact that he was creating art in the early 1770s in Boston in a professional basis itself is a revolutionary act in some ways. The portraits that survived that we know he did, they are lovely portraits, seemingly straightforward portraits of local white residents. Although, as I said, we know he did do a self portrait, which sadly does not survive in any known form. But I would say what happens to his portraits is very political. So he did portraits of his enslavers, Christian and Henry Barnes. They are really fantastic. They are at the Hingham Historical Society in Massachusetts. You can still see them today. If you look at them, it looks like Christian Barnes has something very weird going on on her chest. And if you look closely, you can see that it's a gash in that the painting has been, you know, torn there. And the story is that after a horse was tarred and feathered to send a scare tactic message to the Loyalist Barneses that they needed to change their politics or else by their Patriot neighbors, they also effigies were burned in front of their house. To make a point, Christian Barnes was held up at gunpoint in her own house. So because of this combination of terrifying things, they decide to leave. When they leave Massachusetts, the Patriots occupy the house and give it over to the use of American General Henry Knox and his wife Lucy. And Christian Barnes is very upset by this because she's known Lucy Knox her whole life, and she's like, how could she possibly take over my house and use my furniture and my piano and my portraits? But the portraits, what happens is, I think, a very political statement in and of itself, because that gash is the result of Patriot soldiers running a bayonet through the heart of Christian Barnes when they occupy the house to hand it over to the Patriot general and his wife. So I think what happens to Prince Dima's portraits is very political and a reminder of the violence that is at the heart of the American Revolution, very often practiced by patriots more so than Loyalists, which, again, is a history that is not certainly well known in academic circles, but still, I think, not well known in broader public circles. And then in terms of Phillis Wheatley, she is a poet, and she writes these amazing, very erudite poems that are very Much in the style of, you know, highly classical iambic pentameter. You know, they're not just sort of sentimental ramblings. They are very precise and very, you know, professional in a sense. And then they actually become professional because she does put together a book of her poems and does sell this book of poems. And the poems, many of them have a very direct political statement to make, and they all lean pro patriot, the ones that are making this direct political statement, although she's very savvy and diplomatic. And she also writes poems to people like Lord Dartmouth and the Countess of Huntington and her English patrons who are not going to be American patriots. She's very clever that way. But she also, for example, writes a highly flattering poem to George Washington, who at the time has become the commander in chief of the Continental Army. And she writes poems about liberty and how America offers promises of liberty. So she's very much using. Seizing upon the ideals of the American Revolution, despite the fact that she has suffered enslavement at the hands of Americans. Right. And then the Wright family, Joseph Wright, obviously, is creating these highly political portraits like the one I opened with. Soon after that one was hanging on the walls of the Royal Academy. He published a self portrait of himself in print form. So, you know, widely circulated, easily accessible, not expensive. As a self portrait, he looks very sort of defiant. His hands are in his pockets, his hair sort of, you know, disheveled and unkempt. He's not wearing a wig. And he's labeled himself Yankee Doodle or the American Satan, which I think has a lot to say about his point of view. And his mother, Patience Wright, in this wildly popular wax museum that she runs, she installs tableaux that make pointedly pro American political statements. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, she installs the figure of an indigenous man she identifies as an Indian chief and his wife. So sort of encapsulating in wax the same trope that Americans are using to identify themselves with a figure of an Indian in political satire and prints and maps, et cetera. And she also installs biblical tableau representing things like Esther saving her people from the evil king and his evil ministers, which obviously has contemporary relevance. She also has installed figures of people like William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, who's seen as a friend to the American cause. John Wilkes, the famous British radical politician, who's a darling on both sides of the Atlantic among radical Whigs and American patriots. And she also uses her wax museum as a way to run what is an international spy ring. So she is using she's using her art as politics in more ways than one.
- [28:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
These are some very interesting people that would certainly enliven, I can imagine many primary school textbooks. Were these the stories that children got to learn. But talking there about some spy rings, I mean, it's one thing to have a decapitated king's head on display. That in and of itself you mentioned right at the beginning was seen by some people as treasonous. So that's high stakes there. But spy ring seems to take risk to a whole new level. Was this risky?
- [29:09]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Absolutely. Especially since in 1777 a Treason act is passed by the English Parliament, the British Parliament, and it is the first time that treason, which of course there have been many treason acts over the years. You know, treason is. Treason is not something that's new in English or British history, but this one is, is attacked by some people because of its particularities. So for starters, it suspends the right to habeas corpus for people who are convicted under it. Which people as widely apart politically as Edmund Burke and John Wilkes, who are, you know, sort of diametrically politically opposed. Usually both Edmund Burke, John Wilkes say that this is horrible and that, you know, this, the, the right to habeas corpus should never be, never be taken away. Because this is, if someone's habeas corpus can be taken away, then everyone's right to habeas corpus can be taken away. And so this Treason act does that, but it does it for a particular group of people. It is for people who are caught in treasonous activities in what is the North American colonies that are styling themselves United States of America or the high seas and pro American activities on the high seas. And what this has the practical effect of doing is that anyone who is in the United Kingdom or found on the Atlantic, so they're not trying to touch what's happening in North America per se, because that's, they're leaving that up to the military people on the ground. What it meant was that if you were someone like Henry Lawrence, who's a South Carolina politician and one time President of the Continental Congress, and you're sailing across the Atlantic to the Netherlands and your ship gets boarded by the British Navy and you're found carrying papers that are supporting the cause of the self styled United States of America, as the British government would have seen, then you can and will be arrested under the Treason act and you do not have the right to trial and you are kept, quote unquote, at the pleasure of the King. And in the case of Henry Lawrence, for example, he rides out the rest of the war in the Tower of London. And so you have many more, thousands, thousands of American prisoners of war, though, who are captured on the high seas or found engaging in treasonous activities. John Trumbull, the American artist, falls victim to this. He's in London and he's accused of treason and imprisoned in London as well. So you have, in the end, thousands of American prisoners who are either snatched off of the high seas or because of treasonous activities in the United Kingdom and imprisoned without any right to trial indefinitely until the war ends. Because they are not recognized by His Majesty's Government as citizens of an opposing nation, they are seen as treasonous rebels. So there is a very real danger. Only one, one person ends up dying, accused of treasonous activities within the United Kingdom. And it is a man called John the Painter, whose story I detail in the book. And that is because even though he's British, he calls himself an American patriot and he has a very foolish plan to blow up parts of Royal Navy shipyards and gets caught and gets hanged for his activities. So there is a very real danger, even though it's not large numbers of people who are being scooped up and educated, there are large numbers of people who are being scooped up and imprisoned indefinitely. So there is a very real danger if you are found engaged in pro American treasonous activities. And so when Patience Wright was engaging in espionage, she would have known because one of the things that she did was serve as an advocate for these American prisoners of war. She tried to raise money for their sustenance and in some cases tried to get them freed. And so she knew exactly what she was up against when she was engaging in this international spy ring. But I think one of the reasons it was widely known, this is another reason why the portrait that her son painted of her and hung on the walls of the Royal Academy had such an impact. I think she was widely known to be a spy. I've read letters in the British Library where the sort of 18th century equivalent of MI6. Say we found another one of Mrs. Wright's letters to Franklin in, in Paris, but her information's kind of wrong, so we're going to let it go through because it might actually do our side more good than harm. So I'm not sure how effective of a spy she actually was, but, but you know, she, she did run this spy ring because one of the things that she did was she also gathered espionage through chatting with the many well connected people who regularly came to her museum and talked with her as well. As saw the exhibits, people like Lord north, who was an old, you know, acquaintance of hers from when they both lived in the colonies, and John Wilkes and his daughter and William Pitt. And so she passes this information that she gathers from these conversations because her art has connected her to all these great and powerful people. And she records this and puts them in wax heads that she ships across the Atlantic for her sister Rachel, who's operating a wax museum in Philadelphia, to pass along to the members of Continental Congress who come to her wax museum on the other side of the Atlantic. So it's this amazing story of these women who are pro America, using their art as a means to engage in espionage to further the American cause under what are admittedly dangerous circumstances. Chances.
- [34:38]
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- [35:01]
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that definitely makes pretty clear that there are known risks going on that they are running into. But the thread I most want to pick up from what you've just told us there is this, the impact as well of the kind of society connections to making this happen. Right. An espionage ring without information is not exactly helpful. And one name comes up a lot in the book in terms of famous people that Patience Wright, for example, has connections with, with, which is Ben Franklin. Why does he come up so much in this story on both sides of the Atlantic?
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Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Yes, it's a, it's a great question too. And I, I mean, I feel like the longer I do 18th century history, the more I feel like it's impossible to tell a story that doesn't at some point connect with Benjamin Franklin. I really feel like he's everywhere. But so the reason that he's in this story, of course, initially is that he is in London for many years. And so since A lot of this. This story unfolds in London and involves Americans and pro American people living in London. It would be hard for Benjamin Franklin not to show up. In some ways, he is at the epicenter of the many Americans who are in London for various reasons during the Revolutionary era. Reasons of business, reasons of family, reasons of artistic production. And so he's someone who is a sort of one of the nexus points for. For the American community in. In London. He, of course, is there to further the interests of various colonies, not just his own home colony of Pennsylvania, but also Massachusetts. And he is someone who is widely admired in Europe because of his electrical experiments, in particular because of his scientific. Scientific prowess. And one of the reasons that he and Patience Wright connect is that Patience Wright arrives in London with, you know, sort of like a couple of wax in a dream, right? But she also has a letter of introduction from Franklin's favorite sister, Jane. And so she wows Franklin with, you know, the real realistic depictions of real people. She brings with her a wax head of his. His friend Cadwallader Colden, who's a fellow American scientist. And she really becomes friendly with him for this reason. And so when the war begins and he goes first to America and then to France, he's a logical person for her to use as a funnel for her artistic and espionage activities. And Franklin, also, because of his political connections, there are many other sort of side characters in the book. People like Arthur and William Lee from Virginia, who are in London and also operating to further the American cause, and they're working with Benjamin Franklin. And so Franklin really is connected to this story in fascinating ways that are artistic as well as political. And I don't think people usually think of Franklin as an art patron, but he's interested in what the rights can do with their art and in furthering their artistic cause as well. So he really does pop up on both sides of the Atlantic and in Paris as well as. As in London.
- [38:41]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Really interesting to understand how he's connected to all of this. Now, if we're thinking, though, about why he's famous, but the other people we've been talking about so far aren't. Does it come back to what you were telling us earlier about? We just don't have a lot of this art and that's why it's been forgotten.
- [38:58]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
I think that is definitely part of it because, you know, it's. People tend to, I think, valorize what's in a museum. Right. And if it's not in a museum, then it doesn't make it as much into certainly the art historical books or the historical books. But I think the other part of it is that this is where I do think it comes back to the identity of these forgotten people I'm discussing, because Franklin, of course, no one is denying that Franklin is a pivotally important person, not just in my book, but in general. And. But I think one of the reasons that he is so outsized is that he is a. He's a wealthy white man who is therefore eligible to do things like sit in Continental Congress and be part of the Constitutional Convention and, you know, hold these important political offices, first for the colonies and then for the United States. And so. And it would have. It's very. It would have been very unusual for we know this to be true because there were black men who were proposed for very few, but black men who were proposed for membership in. In the Royal Society, for example, not of art, but, you know, the one that dealt with more scientific experiments and intellectual achievements and they were not allowed to join. And so I think that Franklin sort of epitomizes an undeniably great figure of great historical importance, but who also would not have been able to do many of the things that he did were he not a wealthy white man. So I do think that that's part of the reason that these other figures drop off the historical as well as art historical record.
- [40:40]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, definitely throws in many ways Benjamin Franklin's. The fact we have remembered him throws that into relief as well. And so what you were talking about earlier of kind of whose individual genius gets recognised in what ways? Right. Calls that into question a bit too. So definitely some useful comparisons there. Was there anything in putting all of this together or presumably more than one thing, given how many details one comes across in historical research. But was there anything that really stuck out in your mind as surprising to you in figuring all this out?
- [41:10]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Oh, there were so many things. As you know, Miranda, when you do research, it's. It. It kind of takes on a life of its own. It takes you down so many unexpected twists and turns and rabbit holes. And I think that's part of the. That's part of the reasons why to me, doing research is always so fun. I mean, it's just such a fun process. I think, I think. I think when I read about Joseph Wright's painting of the decapitated head of Charles I and his mother, that, just, as I said that just completely shocked me because I went in with the assumption that this group of pro American Britons and pro American Americans living in Britain during the war was kind of a weird little minority outsider group. And they were in the minority, but not as much of an outlier minority as I'd thought. I mean, these pro. The pieces praising Joseph Wright's portrait of Charles I decapitated, for example, ran in major London newspapers. So that, to me, was something that was very surprising and sort of related to that, was piecing together the very staunch, pro American, again, minority, but very staunch, and some influential people, such as the British historian Catherine Sawbridge Macaulay, who were living in Bath, England, during the American Revolution. And thinking of Bath not just as a place of, you know, sort of taking the waters and, you know, important social scene, but also as housing this sort of little mini hotbed of pro American political activity was really intriguing to me. And then I just think the entire story of Prince Dima was just so surprising to, you know, sort of wend it in and out. And one thing I'll say in relation to that is that it I mentioned the complexity of the relationships between enslaved and enslaved in that household. And one of the things that took me a while to suss out was that Prince Diemon, his mother, were not the only two people enslaved in that household. There was a third person called Juliet. And the reason it took me a while to suss that out is there aren't records saying these are the three enslaved people in the household of the Barneses in Marborough, Massachusetts. So I'm gleaning all of this from their records, but they're two of a total of five enslaved people in the little town in Massachusetts in which they live, near Boston. And I've figured out that Juliet was not, as I originally thought, reading the letters of Christian Barnes, talking about her, a sort of young girl living in the house or a cousin or a niece or something, but was, in fact, another enslaved person in the household. And the reason I finally figured that out was that Christian Barnes allowed Juliet to, quote, unquote, marry a man called Jack who lived in the neighborhood. And Jack and Juliet, when Juliet gave birth to their first child, Christian Barnes had her give birth in the best room in the. In the household. She had Daphne serve as a midwife. And then this is when I realized that this was not, in fact, a niece or a cousin or something, but rather an enslaved person. Kristen Barnes then with, you know, zero skipping without skipping a beat, says, but sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. And I've decided to dispose of the child. Whether she sold it or gave it away is not clear. And then when Juliet and Jack have are pregnant the second time Juliet gives birth. And it's obvious, as Christian records from the baby's complexion, that Jack is not the father, meaning that a white man impregnated Juliet, probably not with her consent, because she and Jack were adamant that they wanted to stay together despite this. But this time, Christian Barnes is so upset that Juliet has the effrontery to get pregnant again that she not only sells the baby away from her, but Juliet herself. And what surprised and obviously horrified me about that was that I'd been reading pages and pages of letters discussing Juliet and Jack before I realized they were enslaved people. And that just really hit home to me that this is a world of such interpersonal complexities and just thinking of the, you know, the astounding breadth of experience of, you know, Prince Dima having Christian Barnes serve as sort of, you know, an art patron and his fellow enslaved laborer in the household. Juliet being sold away without any recourse and having both her children ripped from her, I think is just, you know, an amazing statement about the complexity of histories of slavery in New England. And I think we still, again, academics talk about this a lot, but I think the general public, I still run into people who don't know there was slavery in New England before the revolution. So, you know, the sort of richness and horror of that story is something that I like to share with people as a reminder of that past and.
- [46:06]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Goes right back to how we started this conversation talking about forgotten histories and the importance of bringing them back into the conversation. So. So thank you for telling us about that aspect of what you found in the research. And in many ways, I think that's sort of a full circle moment. That's a good place to conclude our discussion on this book. But I do have a final question of what you might be working on now that the book is out in the world. Is there anything you want to give us a sneak preview of? Yes.
- [46:30]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
So I have a podcast. It's in the middle of season one. It's called the Thing for Things podcast show about stuff that's not stuffy. So it's. It takes objects as a way into the past. And my co host is British historian Joanna Cohen and we are in a mid season break. But season one, the first few episodes are out and it is on the topic of the stuff of revolution. And we will be picking up and putting out the rest of the season this fall. And then in terms of my personal projects, I have a couple. One is looking at, at exactly one of these things related to Franklin that you asked me about is looking at the world of his daughter Sally Franklin Bash, who is sort of a perfect example of how Franklin in many ways, you know, encapsulates the power of white elite men to dominate the historical narrative, as opposed to, for example, his daughter Sally, who's been very written out of the stories we tell about the past related to Franklin. And the other is I hope I can manage this because I don't usually leave the 18th century comfortably, but it is a story that begins in the 18th century but takes us to the 1820s in Nantucket and is what I hope will be an inspiring story about the power of community to band together black and white to resist the the violent overreach of slave catchers come from Virginia. And I think it's a story that holds a lot of inspiration for our particular moment when communities are are debating about the powers in America of federal governments to come in and do certain things in their their local communities. And like my other two books, it was also inspired by a trip to a museum. So I think I'm officially a one trick pony who who writes writes books inspired by trips to museums.
- [48:31]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, there's a lot of cool museums in the world. So as a method of inspiration, that seems like a pretty good one. So definitely am going to see what you come up with in future. And of course, while you are doing that, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled the Painter's A Forgotten History of the Artist who Championed the American Revolution, published by Harvard University Press in 2025. Zara, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [48:55]
Dr. Zara Ene Hanselen
Thank you so much for having me, Miranda. It was such a fantastic conversation with you.