(b Simsbury, CT, 9 Feb 1770; d ?Simsbury, 1849). American painter. She was a self-taught artist who, from about 1809 to 1826, devoted part of her time to producing a wide range of subjects in watercolour: landscape, genre, historical, biblical, allegorical and literary. Her distinctive style is solid and robust, with a strong sense of contrast and design. Problems in creating realistic form are apparent: faces are largely expressionless, and figures are stocky and two-dimensional. However, these difficulties are compensated for by fresh vigorous colour, bold pattern, artful composition and varied subject-matter. Pinney displayed the primitive artist’s tendency to borrow and model from the best sources at hand: The Cotter’s Saturday Night (c. 1820; New York, Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch priv. col., see Lipman and Winchester, p. 25), in pastel shades against a soft grey background, was probably inspired by an English aquatint illustrating Robert Burns’s poem of the same name, while her most admired watercolour, Two Women (c. 1815; Cooperstown, Mus. NY State Hist. Assoc.), is close in idea and form to a woodcut in an 18th-century children’s book. In some compositions rounded forms, drawn in two different scales, suggest that the patterns of English toile fabric were used as inspiration. Her many pencil sketches reveal an assured draughtsmanship and careful organization. There is often a sense of drama inherent in her vigorous scenes of everyday life. She was fond of painting memorials, in which families mourn by the grave, and she occasionally composed verses, which she inscribed in the margins.