Quick Facts
Biography
Anne Whitney (September 2, 1821 in Watertown, Massachusetts – January 23, 1915 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American sculptor and poet.
Early years
As with many other early, successful 19th century women sculptors, Whitney came from a supportive and liberal – in her case, Unitarian – family background. She was homeschooled and later traveled to Europe, where she studied in Rome, Munich, and Paris before she returning to the US. In 1846 she opened a small school in Salem, Massachusetts.
In the 1860s she exhibited work in the Boston gallery of De Vries, Ibarra & Co. A well-known supporter of both the abolitionist and suffragette movements, Whitney felt the brunt of sexism when in 1875, she won the commission for a statue of Charles Sumner but was denied it because she was a woman.
Career
Whitney and her companion, Addy Manning, lived abroad in the 1860s and 1870s, in Rome, Florence, and Paris. Associated with a group of female artists Henry James described as the "white, marmorean flock", Whitney's life abroad is well documented by more than 400 letters she sent to her family, now among more than 4,000 letters, photographs, and other documentation in the Anne Whitney Archive at Wellesley College. Among her well-known public monuments is the statue of Samuel Adams (1876) in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol, Washington D.C.; another is the statue of Leif Ericson (1887) in Boston, another edition of which was placed in Juneau Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin that year.
She was an accomplished portraitist, completing statues and busts of such famous individuals as John Keats, Samuel Adams, Toussaint l'Ouverture, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, the suffragist Frances Willard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Sewall, Alice Freeman Palmer, Robert Gould Shaw, Eben Norton Horsford, Harriet Martineau, Jennie McGraw Fiske, and Lucy Stone.
Other of her works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Amherst College, Cornell University, Dallas Museum of Art, Harvard University, Smith College, Wellesley College, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Newark Museum, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Mark Twain Memorial, and the Boston Public Library.
Jacqueline Marie Musacchio's article "Mapping the 'White Marmorean Flock': Anne Whitney Abroad, 1866–1867" uses Whitney's extensive correspondence to create a timeline and associated maps of two trips Whitney made in Europe during this period.
Works
123 works by Anne Whitney are listed in the Art Inventories Catalog hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. These include:
- Abby Adeline Manning Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
- Laura Brown, 1859 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
- Lady Godiva, ca. 1861–1864 Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
- Samuel Adams, 1876 United States Capitol, Washington, DC
- William Lloyd Garrison, 1879 Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
- Jennie McGraw Fiske Medallion, Uris Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1892 Mark Twain Memorial
- "SIRIS – Smithsonian Institution Research Information System". siris-artinventories.si.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
- Whitney, Anne. Abby Adeline Manning (1836–1906).
- "Artworks Search Results / American Art". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
- Whitney, Anne (1861-01-01). Lady Godiva.
- Whitney, Anne (1876-01-01). Samuel Adams.
- Whitney, Anne (1878-01-01). William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879).
- Parsons, Kermit C (1968-01-01). "The Great Library". The Cornell campus: a history of its planning and development. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. pp. 169–170.
- Whitney, Anne (1892-01-01). Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Image gallery
Portrait of Whitney by A. Sonrel, ca.1874
Leif Eriksson statue, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Sculpted in 1887.
Samuel Adams statue, Dock Square, Boston
Harriet Martineau
Mary Livermore
Jennie McGraw Fiske, Cornell University Library
