Have you ever noticed how conversations about the American Revolution often center on great battles, founding documents, and famous statesmen?
What if, instead, we explored that world through the eyes—and the hands—of everyday people who shaped it through art?
Zara Anishanslin, Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware and Director of its Museum Studies and Public Engagement Program, joins us to uncover the hidden world of artists, artisans, and makers who painted, stitched, and crafted the Revolution into being. Drawing from her book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution, Zara helps us see how creativity and craftsmanship tell a fuller—and more human—story of America’s founding.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Episode Summary
Zara Anishanslin is an Associate Professor of History and Art History and the Director of Museum Studies and Public Engagement Program at the University of Delaware. Her research expertise is in the history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World and in the material culture, or things, of that period. She joins us explore the lives and work of the everyday artists who championed the American Revolution with details from her book, The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution.
During our exploration, Zara reveals:
1. How Prince Demah and his mother Daphny forged a path from enslavement to artistic recognition.
2. The surprising role London play as a hub of Revolutionary-era artwork
3. How artworks produced about the Revolution during the Revolution differs from the patriotic images we often see hanging in museums today.
What You’ll Discover
- Art of the American Revolution
- Discovery of forgotten artists of the American Revolution
- The Revolutionary Era’s transatlantic network of artists
- London’s St. Martin’s Lane artist community
- Why a lot of contemporary artwork about the Revolution was destroyed
- Daphny and Prince Demah
- The search for a London painter to train Prince Demah
- The London art world
- Artistic “genius” and its relationship with race and gender
- Life in 1770s London as a Black or mixed-race person
- Prince Demah, the portraitist
- Demah’s life in revolutionary Boston
- Actions against Loyalists in Revolutionary Massachusetts
- Self-emancipation for enslaved people when Loyalist owners fled
- Prince Demah’s support of the American Revolution
- Robert Edge Pine, English artist and supporter of the American Revolution
- The cost Robert Edge Pine paid for his loyalty to the United States
- How artists and their patriotism change how we understand the Revolution
Links to People, Places, and Publications
1776 in Context Question
How do the paintings of Benjamin West, John Trumbull, Charles Willson Peale, and others portray the Revolution, and what their paintings don’t show us about the Revolution?
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources
🎧 Episode 106: The World of John Singleton Copley
🎧 Episode 201: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America
🎧 Episode 299: Colonial Virginia Portraits
🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution
🎧 Episode 422: Plantation Goods
Support Our Work
Love what you hear on Ben Franklin’s World? Support the show and help us keep history accessible, independent, and deeply researched. Make a tax-deductible donation at benfranklinsworld.com/donate.
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