[1] His middle name may relate to a familial tie with the prominent Bowring family of Exeter, descended from local wool merchants, a member of which was Sir John Bowring (1792–1872), Governor of Hong Kong, whose marble bust was sculpted by Stephens and is now in the collection of the Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter.Stephens began his artistic training as a pupil of the Exeter-based draughtsman and landscape painter John Gendall (d.1865), who gave classes at his premises at 'Mol's Coffee House'.

In 1836 he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy and in 1837 gained a silver medal at the Society of Arts for a small original model of Ajax defying the Gods.

In about 1842 Stephens returned from Italy to London and in 1843 was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Academy for a small relief work of The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithæ.

In 1864 Stephens was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, but possibly in the mistaken belief on the part of the members that he was Alfred Stevens, the sculptor of the Wellington monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

The result was the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, in Queen Street, Exeter, opened in 1868, which incorporated adjuncts for the study of art, science and literature.

Joseph Lloyd Brereton (both at West Buckland School, Devon, which they co-founded), Viscount Ebrington (son of Earl Fortescue), Richard Somers Gard, donor of the site of the Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, where the work remains; Sir William Webb Follett, MP, (1842) and Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, (Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter); William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale (1872) at one time at Lowther Castle now at Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire (National Trust);[12] James Viney, Esq.

Statues situated elsewhere include Francis Russell, 7th Duke of Bedford at Tavistock, Devon; Alfred Rooker in Guildhall Square, Plymouth, Devon; His works located outside the county of Devon include: three standing statues included in those ornamenting the facade of Burlington House, London, home of the Royal Academy: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Christopher Wren; General Lord Saltoun at Fraserburgh, Scotland; Sir John Cordy Burrows (1878), mayor of Brighton, at Brighton, Sussex; Alfred the Great propounding his code of laws, for the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House, London, exhibited in Westminster Hall in 1844; Another in the Mansion House of Alfred the Great in the Neatherd's Cottage, commissioned in 1861, exhibited 1863 at the Royal Academy;[14] Seated marble figure of William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale (1863),[15] in the chapel on the upper floor of the Lowther Mausoleum in Lowther Churchyard, Cumbria.

[16] Joseph Priestley, Natural History Museum, Oxford,[17] one of many figures against the pillars on the ground floor; His other works exhibited included: Satan tempting Eve and Satan Vanquished (c.1845), a double group for a chimney piece in Buckingham Palace; Eve contemplating Death (1853); The Angel, and Evening: Going to the Bath (1861); Euphrosyne and Cupid (1865); Cupid's Cruise (1867); Blackberry Picking: the Thorn (1870); Zingari (1871); Eve's Dream (1873); The Bathers (1877); statuettes of Ophelia (1879) and Lady Godiva (1879); and Shielding the Helpless (1883); Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness; His life-size group in bronze of The "Deer stalker", a crouching semi-nude male figure with a hound, is considered his finest work.

Its place in Bedford Circus was taken by Stephens' statue of William Courtenay, 11th Earl of Devon, which too was later moved to Northernhay Gardens.