American sculptor Harriet Hosmer was BOTD in 1830. Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, she showed an early interest in modelling, and was encouraged by her doctor father to study art and anatomy. She also became a keen rower, skater and horserider, travelling by herself to Dakota when she was still a teenager. Frustrated at being prevented from studying art with live models, Hosman and her father moved to Rome in 1852, accompanied by her lover, the actress Charlotte Cushman. In Rome, Hosmer studied sculpture, and was eventually allowed to work with live models, and devised a process to turn ordinary limestone into marble. She befriended literary celebrities Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Makepeace Thackeray, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Sand and George Eliot, and was the centre of a circle of lesbian expatriate artists including Matilda Hays and Emma Stebbins. In 1856, Cushman left her to live with Stebbins, causing a mild scandal among their friendship circle. She later had a 25-year relationship with the Scottish aristocrat Louisa, Lady Ashburton. With Ashburton’s patronage, she became the most famous female sculptor in America, exhibiting her works internationally and winning a number of important commissions. In 1868, she remarked “I honor every woman who has strength enough to step outside the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies in another; strength enough to stand up and be laughed at, if necessary.” She died in 1908, aged 77.