![Quiner by Frothingham](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Quiner_by_Frothingham.jpg)
Joanna Quiner (August 27, 1796 – September 20, 1868) was an American
seamstress
A dressmaker, also known as a seamstress, is a person who makes custom clothing for women, such as dresses, blouses, and evening gowns. Dressmakers were historically known as mantua-makers, and are also known as a modiste or fabrician.
Nota ...
and self-taught sculptor.
Early life
Quiner was born in
Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, and a suburb of Boston. The population was 42,670 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. A resort, residential, and manufacturing community on the Massachusetts North Shore, Beverly incl ...
, the daughter of Abraham Quiner, Jr. and Susannah Camell.
Career
For much of her early life, Quiner worked as a seamstress in her hometown of
Beverly and in nearby
Salem; she did some upholstery for the family of
Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860) was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincol ...
, and came to admire Parker's views. In 1838, she took a position in the household of Seth Bass, the librarian at the
Boston Athenæum
The Boston Athenaeum is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It is also one of a number of subscription library, membership libraries, for which patrons pay a yearly subscription fee to use Athenaeum services. The instit ...
. She lived in the Athenaeum building with the Bass family; sculptor
Shobal Vail Clevenger kept studio space there, and she observed him at work. She borrowed some of Clevenger's clay and crafted a likeness of Seth Bass that was of such quality that he encouraged her to continue her art. She was 42-year-old at the time.
Quiner exhibited work at the Athenaeum in 1846–48, and in 1847 worked there briefly as a gallery attendant in the Orpheus Room, but ill health combined with financial pressures caused her to give up sculpting and return to sewing in her last years.
Quiner worked exclusively in plaster during her career.
Her best-known work is a portrait of
Robert Rantoul, cast in plaster and presented to the Athenaeum in 1842;
it was the first sculpture by a woman to be shown there when it was exhibited in 1846. She also crafted portrait busts of
Fitch Poole,
Alonzo Lewis
Alonzo Lewis (1794–1861) was a teacher, writer, surveyor, poet, reporter, editor, and publisher of Lynn, Massachusetts. He was an ardent abolitionist and edited the ''Lynn Weekly Mirror'', the ''Lynn Record'' (in 1830), and ''Freedom's Amule ...
, and
James Frothingham,
whose own portrait of the sculptor is held by the Beverly Public Library in
Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, and a suburb of Boston. The population was 42,670 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. A resort, residential, and manufacturing community on the Massachusetts North Shore, Beverly incl ...
.
The Beverly Historical Society collection includes portrait busts of Quiner's father and of
Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford
Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford (May 6, 1829 — June 2, 1921) was a Christian Universalist minister and biographer who was active in championing universal suffrage and women's rights. She was the first woman ordained as a Universalist minister in Ne ...
, a good friend. Hanaford wrote a biographical sketch of Quiner,
and also penned two
sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...
s inspired by her and her work.
Death
Quiner died either at her sister's residence in
Lynn or in her hometown of Beverly, and is buried in the Central Cemetery in Beverly.
A laudatory notice appeared in the Beverly ''Citizen'' around the time of her death.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quiner, Joanna
1796 births
1868 deaths
19th-century American sculptors
American textile designers
People from Beverly, Massachusetts
Sculptors from Massachusetts
19th-century American women sculptors