Her career in art was supported by her own commissions, her wealthy New York family, and her lover, who was the most famous English-language actress of the mid-nineteenth century.

Stebbins was born on September 1, 1815 and raised in New York City, the third daughter and sixth of nine children of a bank president and a Nova Scotia-born mother. Her family encouraged her talents in art and writing. She studied at various American studios and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1843. She exhibited in National Academy and other shows.

In 1857, at the age of forty-one, Stebbins went to Rome for further study. In that city--home to a sizable Anglo-American colony--she found a large infrastructure supporting art: teachers, technicians, artists, students, and a flow of international collectors. Stebbins remained in Rome for the next decade, during which the United States Civil War (1861-1865) took place.

Shortly after arriving in Rome, Stebbins met Charlotte Saunders Cushman (1816-1876). Handsome, charismatic, and an exceptionally successful actress, Cushman was recovering from the breakup of a ten-year relationship with actress and writer Matilda Hays. After an Easter trip to Naples in 1857, Stebbins and Cushman decided to spend their lives together.

Stebbins and Cushman's friendship circle included lesbian sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908) and African-American/Native-American sculptor (Mary) Edmonia Lewis (1843-ca 1911), who may also have been a lesbian. They were also acquainted with French lesbian painter Rosa Bonheur.

In Rome, Stebbins--who had originally trained as a painter--shifted her interest to an idealized form of figure sculpture. After a period of study, she supported herself through sculpture commissions, many from Americans. Cushman promoted her work and, at least once, raised funds for casting a major piece.

An early commission was a portrait bust of Cushman made in 1859-1860. Cushman had a prominent jaw of the type often referred to as "lantern," which Stebbins handled with grace and dignity. Her bronze statue of educator Horace Mann was installed outside the State House in Boston in 1865.

Stebbins' best known work rises above the Bethesda Fountain in New York City's Central Park. Unveiled in May 1873, Angel of the Waters is a draped, winged, bronze figure with arms spread downward, blessing the water below. Her pedestal is supported by four cherubs representing Health, Temperance, Purity, and Peace.

When, in 1869, Cushman was operated on for breast cancer, Stebbins devoted herself to nursing her lover. The following year, the couple returned to the United States.

Cushman died of pneumonia in Boston in 1876 at the age of fifty-nine. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Following Cushman's death, Stebbins wrote the actress's biography and compiled her correspondence: Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life (1878).

After the death of Cushman, Emma Stebbins produced no more sculpture. She died in New York in 1882 at age sixty-seven of "phthisis," a progressive wasting disease, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

The accomplishments of American lesbian artists in the nineteenth century, some of whom are only now receiving recognition, is all the more remarkable for the obstacles they faced as women and as homosexuals.

While nude depictions of women appear in most cultures, on both sides of the equator, and in rich variety, lesbian artists have been particularly resourceful in their use of the female nude.

The most popular artist of nineteenth-century France and a renowned painter of animals, Rosa Bonheur lived in two consecutive committed relationships with women.

One of the most famous actresses of the nineteenth century, Charlotte Cushman was a commanding presence both on and off stage; she used her fortune and fame to champion the work of other women artists, among them her lover Emma Stebbins.

American sculptor Harriet Hosmer, among a handful of successful women artists in the nineteenth century, frequently scandalized the polite society of her day by her mannish dress and adventurous behavior.

Though closeted, Henry James had a number of intimate relations with young men, and his sexual orientation imbued his fiction.

American sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis lived most of her life in Rome, where she was a member of a lesbian circle of American expatriates and artists.

Boston sculptor Anne Whitney, who as a woman in a male-dominated field struggled for equality, chose subjects--abolitionists, feminists, and blacks--that reflected her liberal political and social beliefs.