The tall, deep-voiced actress Charlotte Cushman proved her ability to captivate audiences from the first moment she set foot onstage. Following her debut in 1836 in New Orleans as Lady Macbeth, she moved quickly from one triumph to another. By the 1850s the reviews of her performances in both America and England had become studies in superlatives. "Whenever the occasion arrived for . . . passionate feeling, poetic significance, dramatic effect," wrote one of her admirers, Cushman invariably "made it superb."

For many years Cushman played men's as well as women's roles. Although some objected to her "trouser roles," her interpretations of such parts as Romeo and Hamlet were generally as widely applauded as her female characterizations.

William Page's portrait of Cushman, the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning noted, "is really wonderful-soul and body together." Completed in 1853, the likeness was taken in Rome, where Browning, Page, and Cushman were all living at the time.