[1] Immediately after graduating she joined the staff of the recently established Courtauld Institute, where she did a variety of jobs including managing the slide library, and also continued her studies.
[2] That year, the research she had done on 17th-century drawings for Whitehall Palace and for Worcester College, Oxford, in the collection at Chatsworth House, was accepted for a D. Litt.
In 1957 she and Oliver Millar co-wrote the volume on the period from 1625 to 1714 for the Oxford History of English Art, Whinney contributing the sections on architecture.
Then, commissioned by Nikolaus Pevsner, she wrote the volume on British Sculpture from the Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century for the Pelican History of Art, which appeared in 1964.
She went on to co-write a catalogue of the collection of John Flaxman's models at University College, London, and a book on early Flemish painting.