- Anne Whitney
Anne Whitney (1821 - 1915) was an American sculptor and poet. She was born in
Watertown, Massachusetts onSeptember 2 ,1821 and died inBoston ,Massachusetts onJanuary 23 ,1915 .Early years
As with so many of the early, successful 19th Century women sculptors Whitney came from a liberal, in her case,
Unitarian , supportive family background. Whitney washomeschooled as a youngster, but since women of her day would not be admitted toYale orHarvard universities, she could not attend college. In 1846 she opened a small school inSalem, Massachusetts Traveling to Europe she studied in Rome, Munich, and Paris before returning to the United States.A well known supporter of both the abolitionist and suffragette movements, Whitney herself was to publicly feel the brunt of the sexism of the day when, in 1875, the commission for a statue of
Charles Sumner that won a competition was denied her when it was discovered that the winning model was created by a woman.Career and work
Among her well known public monuments is the statue of
Samuel Adams (1876) located in theNational Statuary Hall Collection in theUnited States Capitol ,Washington D.C. , the statue "Leif the Discoverer" (1887) inBoston, Massachusetts , with another edition that same year placed in Juneau Park,Milwaukee, Wisconsin .Whitney was an accomplished portraitist, completing statues and busts of such well know individuals as
John Keats ,Samuel Adams ,Toussaint l'Ouverture ,William Lloyd Garrison ,Charles Sumner ,Frances Willard ,Harriet Beecher Stowe ,Samuel Sewall ,Alice Freeman Palmer ,Robert Gould Shaw ,Eben Norton Horsford ,Harriet Martineau , Jennie McGraw Fiske,Lucy Stone and others.Other of her works can be found in the collections of the
Smithsonian Institution ,Amherst College ,Cornell University ,Harvard University ,Smith College ,Wellesley College , theWomen's Christian Temperance Union , Newark, Museum,Mark Twain Memorial ,Boston Public Library ,ources
*"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.
*Murdock, Myrtle Cheney, "National Statuary Hall in the Nation's Capitol", Monumental Press, Inc., Washington D.C., 1955.
*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.
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