(b Watertown, MA, 2 Sept 1821; d Boston, MA, 23 Jan 1915). American sculptor and writer. She achieved eminence not only as a sculptor but also as a campaigner for social justice, pressing for the abolition of slavery and equality for women. From 1846 to 1848 she ran a small school in Salem, MA. She also wrote and became well known in New England literary circles. In 1855 Whitney turned to sculpture, studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1860) and in Boston (1862–4) with William Rimmer. Her sculptures often carried social messages: Africa (1864) depicts a woman awakening from the sleep of slavery. Between 1867 and 1876 she visited Munich, Paris and Rome. The most celebrated work of this period, Roma (1869), a seated figure of a decrepit beggar-woman, wearing medallions of monuments, symbolizes the decay of the city. Scandalized, the authorities prevented its public display, but several versions were later exhibited in Rome, in London, and at the World Columbian Exposition (1893), Chicago. In 1876 Whitney moved to Boston. Her subjects included such women as Harriet Beecher Stowe (1892; Hartford, CT, Stowe House). In 1902 she cast a statue of the abolitionist Charles Sumner, but it was set up publicly in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, only in 1929, after its initial rejection by the Boston Arts Committee on the grounds of Whitney’s gender.

• Whitney, Anne
  • Censorship
  • Lewis, Edmonia
  • USA, §IV, 1: Sculpture: The Colonial period to World War I