Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney
Portrait of Anne Whitney
Born	September 2, 1821 Watertown, Massachusetts
Died	January 23, 1915 (aged 93) Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Known for	Sculptor, poetry

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.

Statue of Charles Sumner in Harvard Square sculpted by Whitney

Bronze medallion of Jennie McGraw Fiske (1891)

In the 1860s she exhibited work in the Boston gallery of De Vries, Ibarra & Co.^[1] 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.^[2]

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,^[3] now among more than 4,000 letters, photographs, and other documentation in the Anne Whitney Archive at Wellesley College.^[4] 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,^[5] 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.^[6]

Works

123 works by Anne Whitney are listed in the Art Inventories Catalog hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^[7] These include:

• Abby Adeline Manning Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts^[8]
• Laura Brown, 1859 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC^[9]
• Lady Godiva, ca. 1861–1864 Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas^[10]
• Samuel Adams, 1876 United States Capitol, Washington, DC^[11]
• William Lloyd Garrison, 1879 Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts^[12]
• Jennie McGraw Fiske Medallion, Uris Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York^[13]
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1892 Mark Twain Memorial^[14]

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

Sources

• Murdock, Myrtle Cheney, National Statuary Hall in the Nation's Capitol, Monumental Press, Inc., Washington D.C., 1955.
• Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol, Prepared by the Architect of the Capitol under the Joint Committee on the Library, United States Government Printing House, Washington, 1965.
• Opitz, Glenn B, Editor, Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986.
• Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1990.
• Eleanor Tufts. "An American Victorian Dilemma, 1875: Should a Woman Be Allowed to Sculpt a Man?" Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 1, Uneasy Pieces (Spring, 1992), pp. 51–56.
• Fowler, Cynthia. "Anne Whitney's Contribution to Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture." Masters Thesis, Harvard University, Extension School, Cambridge, MA 1994.

References

1. Ladies' Repository: a Universalist Monthly Magazine (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, no.37 Cornhill), April 1867
2. "Back Bay East". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
3. "Introduction, Anne Whitney Abroad, 1867–68". www.19thc-artworldwide.org. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
4. "Primary Sources, Anne Whitney Abroad, 1867–1868". www.19thc-artworldwide.org. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
5. "Welcome to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center". Retrieved 1 January 2015.
6. "Anne Whitney Abroad, 1867–68". www.19thc-artworldwide.org. Retrieved 2015-07-25.
7. "SIRIS – Smithsonian Institution Research Information System". siris-artinventories.si.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
8. Whitney, Anne. Abby Adeline Manning (1836–1906).
9. "Artworks Search Results / American Art". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2015-07-26.
10. Whitney, Anne (1861-01-01). Lady Godiva.
11. Whitney, Anne (1876-01-01). Samuel Adams.
12. Whitney, Anne (1878-01-01). William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879).
13. 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.
14. Whitney, Anne (1892-01-01). Harriet Beecher Stowe.

External links

• Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress. Flagstaff Park, Massachusetts Avenue & Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Middlesex County, MA
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Le Modèle (bronze), 1875