31 Facts About Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney made full-length and bust sculptures of prominent political and historical figures, and her works are in major museums in the United States.

Two statues of Samuel Adams were made by Whitney and are located in Washington, DC's National Statuary Hall Collection and in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Anne Whitney portrayed women who lived ground-breaking lives as suffragists, professional artists, and non-traditional positions for women at the time, including noted economist and Wellesley College president Alice Freeman Palmer.

Anne Whitney was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, on September 2,1821.

Anne Whitney was the youngest child of Nathaniel Ruggles Whitney Jr.

The family moved to East Cambridge by the time that Anne Whitney was 12 years old and returned to Watertown in 1850.

Anne Whitney began making portrait busts of family members in about 1855.

At the time that Anne Whitney began to study art, women had limited educational opportunities.

Anne Whitney moved to New York so that she could study anatomy at a Brooklyn hospital from 1859 and into 1860, and then studied drawing and modeling at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Anne Whitney was on the front end of the New Woman movement.

Anne Whitney made Laura Brown, a bust of a young girl, and exhibited it at the National Academy of Design in New York.

Anne Whitney critiqued her works as she began making full-length sculptures.

Anne Whitney made a life-size sculpture of Lady Godiva and, during the Civil War, a large sculpture entitled Africa.

Anne Whitney associated with a group of female artists in Rome that Henry James described as the "that strange sisterhood of American 'lady sculptors' who at one time settled upon the seven hills in a white, marmorean flock".

Anne Whitney was acquainted with American artists that were in Florence and Rome, like Edmonia Lewis, Harriet Hosmer, Florence Freeman, and others within the circle of stage actress Charlotte Cushman, a patron of the arts.

Anne Whitney created the bronze sculpture Roma in 1869 to represent the "spiritual destitution" that the citizens experienced due to the political climate, symbolized by the ancient beggar woman.

Anne Whitney departed for the United States in 1870 when Rome was overtaken by Giuseppe Garibaldi's forces, then returned to Rome for one year before moving back to the United States in 1871.

Anne Whitney then exhibited her sculpture of Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture in Boston.

Anne Whitney knew Sumner, a senator and abolitionist, through her brother Alexander, who was a classmate of Sumner's at Harvard University.

Anne Whitney exhibited the model of Sumner at the Centennial Exposition of 1876.

Anne Whitney corresponded with Frederick Law Olmsted about the placement of the monument and its landscaping.

Anne Whitney depicted Alice Freeman Palmer, President of Wellesley College; economist Harriet Martineau; and suffragists Frances Willard and Whitney's cousin Lucy Stone, which is in the Boston Public Library.

Anne Whitney depicted Mary Tileston Hemenway, the famed philanthropist and reformer.

Anne Whitney completed statues and busts of other famous individuals, such as Edward Charles Pickering and James Walker, presidents of Harvard University.

Anne Whitney made sculptures John Keats of the poet, and sculptures of Samuel Sewall, Robert Gould Shaw, and Eben Norton Horsford.

Anne Whitney did, though, create a larger version of Roma for the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Anne Whitney was an individualist, who lived independently and cut her hair short, which annoyed her Victorian neighbors.

Anne Whitney lived with and shared her life with Abby Adeline Manning, who devoted her life to Whitney.

Anne Whitney Manning lived abroad in the 1860s and 1870s, in Rome, Florence, and Paris.

Anne Whitney died on January 23,1915, in Boston, Massachusetts of cancer and was buried in Cambridge at Mount Auburn Cemetery alongside Abby Adeline Manning.

Anne Whitney created prominent monuments for public sites, like the United States Capitol, of historical figures Samuel Adams, Charles Sumner, and Leif Erikson.