If the name Emma Stebbins doesn’t trigger any specific associations, the fault isn’t yours. She was a neoclassical sculptor when women weren’t particularly welcome in the arts. She was a lesbian, and not a particularly closeted one, when the term still conjured images of “someone from the Island of Lesbos.” And she had, at least according to her 1882 obituary in the New York Daily Tribune, an extremely modest disposition. “She withdrew much into the shade of private life,” according to the anonymous writer, “and for this reason, the full extent of her accomplishments may not be known to the public.”
But even if you’ve never heard the name Emma Stebbins, there’s a good chance you’re passingly familiar with at least one of her works—specifically, Angel of the Waters, which stands atop Bethesda Fountain in New York City’s Central Park and has appeared in Annie Hall, The Producers, Elf and many other films set in the city. The statue is also the focal point of the final scene of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
Modest of disposition though she might have been, Stebbins was the first woman to receive a public art commission from New York City—designing and sculpting Angel of the Waters took “four winters,” according to her obituary; she liked to do her own carving. She studied under the Welsh sculptor John Gibson, who praised her work, and American sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers, and had work featured at the National Academy of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During her lifetime, her work was sought after by collectors and generally well-received by critics, though at least one New York Times writer panned Angel of the Waters for being too androgynous: “the breasts are feminine, the rest of the body is in part male and in part female.”
Stebbins was not, as you may have already guessed, of modest means. She was one of nine children born to a wealthy banker, and while riches couldn’t do much to dampen the sexism of the U.S. art scene, her parents nonetheless encouraged her to practice her art and supported her traveling to Rome in 1856 to study sculpting. There, she joined a community of artistic women expats that included sculptor Harriet Hosmer—Henry James refers to the “strange sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’”—and actress Charlotte Cushman. She completed several works during this time, including The Lotus Eater (1857-60), commissioned by Gibson, and Industry (1859) and Commerce (1859), commissioned by entrepreneur Charles Heckscher and displayed in New York’s Goupil & Cie gallery.
She also created a bust of Cushman, with whom she had struck up a romantic relationship—the two exchanged vows and lived as married, according to journalist Maria Teresa Cometto, who wrote the go-to biography of the sculptor: Emma and the Angel of Central Park: The Story of a New York Icon and the Woman Who Created It.
Stebbins’ works beyond Angel of the Waters aren’t difficult to find, but they are relatively dispersed—at least until September, when the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, opens “Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History.” The exhibition will bring together fourteen of the artist’s rare marble sculptures, including Industry, Commerce, Sandalphon, The Lotus Eater and the bust of Charlotte Cushman, which are part of the museum’s permanent collection. Other works will come from private collectors, libraries and major museums, including four sculptures previously considered lost (three of which haven’t been displayed publicly for more than a century).
If you want to see some of Stebbins’ work in person before trekking out to Long Island in the fall, you can peruse the scrapbook kept by her sister, Mary Stebbins Garland, between 1858 and 1882, which is in the collection of the Archive of American Art and fully digitized. You can visit her statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn—carved in 1867, it’s her only life-size marble—or head up to Boston to visit her bronze statue of Horace Mann outside the Massachusetts State House. The latter work will be showcased in the Heckscher exhibition through “innovative technology,” according to a press release, along with historic images and documents that will offer insight into Stebbins’s world and Cushman’s influence upon it.
Sadly, critics in the U.S. often attributed Stebbins’ success to Cushman’s influence rather than her artistic merit. After Cushman’s death in 1876, Stebbins largely withdrew from public life and stopped producing major works. Two years later, she edited and published Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life, preserving the legacy of her partner. It will be interesting to see how the Heckscher Museum of Art, which is pleasantly forthright about calling the actress Stebbins’ wife in the exhibition’s preview materials, will expand on what is currently known about the pair’s relationship.
