No material is more responsive to the artist’s touch than wax, immortalizing as it does his individual handling in a manner peculiarly its own. Perhaps no English portraitist has given evidence of greater ability than did S. Percy, whose wax portraits, as well as those by Peter Ruow, are prized by collectors. Artists in wax portraiture were not unknown in America during colonial times. Among the names of early wax-portrait artists in America that of Patience Wright stands forth prominently. She was born in 1725, the daughter of Mr. Lowell, a Quaker of Bordentown, New Jersey. When twenty-three years of age she married Joseph Wright, and some years later was left a widow with three children. In 1772 she went to England. Already she had become noted for her excellent work in portraiture. A bust of Thomas Penn was one of her earliest works of the London period and the wax-portrait of Washington from her hand, modeled after an original from life by her son, Joseph Wright, is now in the possession of Dr. Richard H. Harte of Philadelphia. This is the work which she mentions in a letter to Washington preserved in the Library of Congress: You may have my most grateful thanks for your kind attention to my son in taking him into your Family to encourage his genii and giving him the pleasing oppourtunity of taking a Likeness that has I sincerely hope gave his country and your friends, Sir, satisfaction. I am impatient to have a copy of what he has done that I may have the honour of making a model from it in wax work, as it has been for some time the wish and desire of my heart to model a likeness of General Washington. To this Washington replied: If the bust which your son has modelled of me should reach your hands and afford your genii any employment that can amuse Mrs. Wright it must be an honour done me. Wax portraiture almost died out in the nineteenth century, but it is of interest to note its recent revival by Ethel Frances Mundy and other skilful artists. Good old Giorgio Vasari, the gossipy chronicler of the Old Masters to whom we owe nearly all of our knowledge of the lives of the early Italian painters, wrote an interesting treatise on the technique of art from which the following is quoted, as being of further interest to the collector of wax portraits: In order to show how wax is modeled let us first speak of the working of wax and not of clay. To render it softer a little animal fat and turpentine and black pitch are put into the wax, and of these ingredients it is the fat that makes it more supple, the turpentine adds tenacity, and the pitch gives it the black color and consistency, so that after it has been worked and left to stand it will become hard. This was the wax probably used for the backgrounds. Vasari continues: