John Neal Tilton

Emma Stebbins modeled and carved this portrait bust of her nephew John Neal Tilton (1860-1921) when both sculptor and subject were based in Rome, Italy, in the mid-1860s. Tilton’s cherubic features are also featured in Samuel (ca. 1865-66), a full-length representation of the Old Testament prophet as a youth, and in the four subsidiary figures representing temperance, purity, health, and peace for her best-known work, Angel of the Waters for the Bethesda Fountain, unveiled in Central Park in 1873, the first New York City public art commission awarded to a woman. During the 1850s and 1860s, Stebbins and her life partner, the actor Charlotte Cushman, were central figures in Rome’s expatriate cultural community. She created small-scale marbles for domestic decoration, including this appealing representation of youthful innocence, as well as public sculptures for New York and Boston.