American sculptor Emma Stebbins was BOTD in 1815. Born in New York City to a wealthy banking family, her family encouraged her artistic talent from a young age. In 1842, her work was featured at the National Academy of Design in New York, though she was prevented from being elected as a member. She moved with her brother to Rome in 1856, where she studied sculpture, befriending a circle of lesbian expatriate artists including American sculptor Harriet Hosmer. The following year, Stebbins fell in love with Hosmer’s girlfriend, the actress Charlotte Cushman. They quickly became a couple – to Hosmer’s chagrin – exchanging unofficial vows and referring to themselves as spouses. Cushman used her celebrity to help secure sculpture commissions for Stebbins, including Industry and Commerce for industrialist Charles Heckscher, a statue of politician Horace Mann for the State legislature in Boston, and a marble bust of Christopher Columbus. She is best known for her 1873 sculpture Angel of the Waters, a bronze angel forming the centrepiece of the Bethseda Fountain in Central Park, New York City. Stebbins and Cushman lived together in Europe until Cushman’s death in 1876. She spent the rest of her life as the caretaker of Cushman’s legacy, writing a memoir, publishing her letters and creating several popular statues in her honour. She died in 1882 aged 67. Largely forgotten in the 20th century, interest in her life and work was revived in the 1990s, largely due to Tony Kushner‘s play Angels in America, in which Angel of the Waters is prominently featured. In 2019, the New York Times published an obituary of Stebbins, as part of their Overlooked series.