"[4][5] Another art historian, however, has compared the "harsh edges and forthright local color"[6] of Robbins's flower paintings unfavorably to the work of Childe Hassam, yet those are precisely the qualities that her fans admire.
Her work became fashionable in both America and England, and she began painting botanical designs on china and even furniture for her clients.
[3] In the late 1860s, after the introduction of chromolithography, the lithographer Louis Prang hired her to create a series of flowers and autumn leaves specifically to be sold as prints.
[3][7] Through contacts among prominent Bostonians like Henry Ward Beecher, she was invited to create a frieze (since destroyed) at Wellesley College outside Boston.
[2] She became one of the first of a series of prominent artists who stayed at Thaxter's Appledore House hotel, where she painted the flowers in its famous garden.