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The accomplishments of Nineteenth-Century Lesbian American Artists, some of whom are only now receiving recognition, are all the more remarkable for the obstacles they faced as homosexuals and as women working in a male-dominated field.
 The Swimming Hole, a photograph by Thomas Eakins.
Nineteenth-Century Gay Male American Artists often suffered from guilt, but artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins celebrated male camaraderie and affection, while expatriate John Singer Sargent depicted the dandy. Some American artists, including Eakins, used the relatively new medium of photography to celebrate the beauty of the male nude as well as male friendships.
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Bicycles, introduced in Europe around 1863, were the first democratic means of transportation, and soon became both a means and a symbol of women's liberation.
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Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876) was one of the most famous actresses of the nineteenth century. She used her fortune and fame to champion the work of other women artists, among them her lover Emma Stebbins.
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Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), was an American painter, photographer, and teacher who is solidly aligned in the history of art with a homophile sensibility, as expressed particularly in his celebration of the male form, though his personal sexual orientation is uncertain.
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Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is one of the most important American painters and printmakers of the second half of the nineteenth century. Homer created a distinctly American, modern classical style in which he celebrated male and female friendships.
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Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908) fought against social barriers that kept women in positions of financial dependence to become a noted sculptor with a unique neoclassical style. Her mannish dress and adventurous behavior frequently scandalized the polite society of her day.
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Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (1856-1912) is best known today as the last lover of acclaimed French painter Rosa Bonheur, but she was also an accomplished artist in her own right.
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Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), the only daughter of an Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indian mother and an African-American father, was a sculptor who lived most of her life in Rome, where she was a member of a lesbian circle of American expatriates and artists.
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John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was a celebrated portrait artist. The evidence of his homosexuality resides largely in his work, especially his genre paintings and male nudes.
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Emma Stebbins (1815-1882) is remembered for the sculpture that she produced between 1859 and 1869 and for being the lover of actress Charlotte Cushman. She was one of several women sculptors who went to Rome in the mid-1800s to learn to work in marble.
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Anne Whitney (1821-1915) was a Boston sculptor who struggled for equality in a male-dominated field and chose subjects--abolitionists, feminists, and blacks--that reflected her liberal political and social beliefs.
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