Eisner, Anne

Anne Eisner Putnam (1911–1967) was an abstract and landscape painter, watercolorist, and collector of African art, originally from New York where she also died. She became a writer, best known for her book Madami: My Eight Years of Adventure with the Congo Pygmies. This was an account of her time and experiences in the Belgian Congo. She and her husband, Patrick Tracy Lowell Putnam (1904-1953) met in the USA in 1945 and lived together on Martha's Vineyard and in New York City. They later moved to Africa and later married on July 28, 1948 in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), in the Belgian Congo, what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her husband was a Harvard graduate and student of anthropology who, beginning in the 1930s, established what became known as Camp Putnam along the Epulu River in the Belgian Congo. Camp Putnam was on the edge of the Ituri rainforest of the Belgian Congo, near the home of the pygmies. They ran Camp Putnam for paying tourists, a hotel giving an African experience. At the same time, they also ran a medical clinic and offered legal aid to local people. Among the Putnams’ many outsiders, both tourists and researchers, was anthropologist Colin...