37 
December, 1920 
7 •• • * 
.T i" ' V'■' 
, ' 
The spirit of childhood has been ad¬ 
mirably caught in A Boy with His 
Block, a modern wax. This, like the 
rest, is built up bit by bit on a metal 
plate 
wood as she needed them. But most valuable 
of all were her own deft fingers. 
Miss Mundy’s waxes demonstrate how char¬ 
acter moulds the facial tissues. In a recent 
private exhibition in New York she showed 
serene and beautiful old men and women, 
energetic college boys, debutantes with verve, 
and lovely, winsome little children. Fleeting 
mannerisms, a tossing lock, the characteristic 
droop of eyelids, the way a flower was held, 
the fall of rare old lace or the sag of a pet 
tweed coat, even the baby’s bunny, vise a vise 
to the little man—all were depicted. And it 
is impossible to say whether the color, the 
unbelievably fine modelling or the sure line 
holds one. 
A characteristic of her work is that she 
never obtrudes herself. One feels that she 
withdraws on tiptoe after having left a part 
of herself in her creation. And she goes about 
her work in the simplest way possible, rapidly 
building up the delicate relief as she 
studies her subject, after first outlining 
the figure on a metal plate covered 
with wax to the depth of a small frac¬ 
tion of an inch. On this she builds 
up and adds small particles, each color 
having been ground and worked into 
the wax. Some of the colors are 
brought over from China. 
Wax Portrait History 
Whether or not one has seen good 
waxes, such as are now shown at the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 
York (five of which were owned by 
the late Clyde Fitch and given as a 
memorial by his mother), it is inter¬ 
esting to read a charming essay on 
waxes by Mrs. Bolton, published 
under the auspices of the Daughters 
of the American Revolution in Massa¬ 
chusetts in the form of a small book 
which includes another essay on sil¬ 
houettes. Mrs. Bolton’s essay gives 
the history of waxes briefly, but has 
most to say about the early American 
examples. Those of tli£ 18th Cen¬ 
tury, here as well as in England, were 
much finer than the Victorian waxes, 
which is a reason for gratitude for 
Miss Mundy’s revival of the spirit 
and technique of the earlier and 
greater periods. 
Miss Gwendolin Armour holds a posie that is no 
less effective for being done in colored wax. Miss 
Mundy modeled her 
In the Clyde Fitch collection is an 
18th Century miniature in very 
high relief and delicate tints 
From the Italian late 18th Century period. Red jewels; are 
set into the wax, which is fully colored. In the Clyde Bitch 
collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
Small Miss Hamilton, a granddaugh¬ 
ter of the late J. P. Morgan, stood 
for her portrait in a demure pose that 
the wax reproduces admirably. Ethel 
Mundy fecit 
Some of the old waxes are adorned with 
real jewels. One of the Clyde Fitch group, a 
quaint Italian grande dame, wears tiny emer¬ 
ald chips in earrings and brooch. Seed pearls 
are oftenest used, and in some of the old Ger¬ 
man examples we find bits of silk, velvet and 
feathers as well as gems. This is not regarded 
as the best art. 
Spanish waxes are interesting, but not to be 
compared with the best French and Italian. 
I would say that while the English were very 
much done in wax in the 17th and 18th Cen¬ 
turies, the French and Italians were the 
greatest artists. 
An Early American Miniaturist 
It is not generally known that a wax minia¬ 
turist who had great vogue in London about 
1772 was an American, bom and brought up 
in Bordentown, New Jersey—Patience Lovell 
Wright. She did the King and court circles, 
and one may see her wax figure of 
Lord Chatham in Westminster Ab¬ 
bey. Before going abroad Patience 
Wright had done wax portraits of 
well-known people in Philadelphia, 
and at some time during her career 
she modeled Benjamin Franklin from 
life. It may have been while he was 
experimenting with printing, at Bur¬ 
lington on the Delaware River, not far 
from Bordentown. She also did a 
wax miniature of George Washington 
from a bust modeled from life by her 
own son. 
The student of waxes will find very 
little published data concerning them. 
Besides the book referred to by Mrs. 
Bolton, there are a few articles in old 
periodicals concerning the great for¬ 
eign collections, and a rare, very 
small book dated 1755, printed in 
Geneva and giving a lecture read by 
Monsieur Le Comte de Caylus before 
l’Academie des Belle Lettres. The 
title of this book is Un Memoir Sur 
La Peinture a l’Encaustique des 
Anciens. 
Besides some privately owned fam¬ 
ily portraits in wax here in the United 
States, Mrs. Vanderbilt has an inter¬ 
esting collection, and so has Mr. 
Richard Hunt, of New York. There, 
may be others unknown to us. 
