[1] Ney began sculpting Lady Macbeth in 1903, shortly after she completed the design of her memorial statue of Albert Sidney Johnston.

[4] The piece was cut in marble in Italy beginning in 1903, alongside second copies of Ney's portraits of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin for submission to the National Statuary Hall Collection.

Lady Macbeth is depicted sleepwalking barefoot in a flowing nightgown, her eyes half closed, with her left arm reaching across her body to clutch her right hand.

[2]: 219–220 Lady Macbeth has been understood both as a portrayal of a fictional character and as a self-portrait;[1] the figure's face resembles the artist's own, and Ney wrote in 1903 that the piece was a result and expression of her own feelings of "cruel disappointment" in life.

[6]: 17  The statue's evocation of grief has been interpreted as a reference to a frustrated romance earlier in Ney's life (perhaps with King Ludwig II of Bavaria),[7] or to her participation in political intrigues in 1860s Germany,[2]: 212  as well as to her estrangement from her son.