Samuel Adams (Whitney statues)

Anne Whitney created two public statues of Samuel Adams. One, made in 1876, resides in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol, Washington, D.C.. The other, made in 1880, is located in front of Faneuil Hall Plaza in Boston.

Congress asked each state to provide the nation's capitol with two statues of prominent individuals. Some thought that John Adams, Samuel's cousin and also a president, should have been chosen, but at the time Samuel Adams was the most popular figure in the state's history. Having written thousands of letters to political leaders and newspapers, he was called "the most persuasive political writers of all time" by George Sand.

Whitney won a contest in 1873 to create a statue of Samuel Adams, one of the requirements being that the statue be carved in Italy from a plaster cast made in Boston. She traveled to Italy in 1875 to acquire Carrara marble for the sculpture. It was sent to Washington, D.C. in 1876, the country's centennial. In a verse that mocked the judges who first selected her in a blind competition to create a statue for Charles Sumner, but deselected her when they found out that she was a woman, a verse was published in New York Evening Telegram that stated, "Yet under the dome of the Capitol / Stands Samuel Adams erect and tall, / As free as his namesake before the fall; / And though the image was carved by woman / Rarely is marble so grandly human." The statue was unveiled in the Capitol on December 19, 1876.

Before being sent to Washington, D.C. the statue was exhibited at the Boston Athenæum where it proved to be so popular that the citizens of Boston commissioned a bronze version for the city. The bronze version of the statue on a granite base (1880) was installed on Congress Street in Faneuil Hall Plaza in Boston, where Adams gave speeches about British rule and taxation. It is based upon the marble statue that she made for the National Statuary Hall Collection. She was requested to make another version by the City of Boston.

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