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Many painters lived and worked in the garrets of Covent Garden, and all—even the most distinguished—scoured the area's brothels and taverns for potential models. Emma was just the type of girl to catch a painter's eye. Tall, curvaceous, and creamy-skinned, with glossy chestnut hair and an oval face, she was the English ideal of beauty. She was snatched up by the two greatest portrait painters of the time: bitter rivals George Romney and Joshua Reynolds. Sir Joshua, foremost portrait painter of the age and president of the Royal Academy from 1768 to 1792, was well known for hunting in the brothels of Covent Garden for models, and it seems that he found Emma, perhaps before Romney. His Cupid Unfastening the Girdle of Venus shows a dark-haired, pale-skinned model who looks very much like Emma, her bosom exposed, wearing an almost transparent dress, languishing in bed while Cupid unties her blue sash. Prince Potemkin, adviser to Catherine the Great of Russia, requested a copy to adorn the Hermitage, where it still hangs. Another painting that features a model that looks like Emma is Reynolds's Death of Dido, in which a statuesque dark-haired beauty lies collapsed over a rock, a painting later bought by the Prince of Wales.

Emma appears to have modeled for one of Reynolds's greatest paintings, Thais, now resplendent in the drawing room of Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. Thais, mistress of Alexander the Great, emerges from the darkness, draped in white, hair flowing behind her, holding a torch to encourage Alexander to set fire to the Temple of Persepolis. When the painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1781, it caused a sensation. The public demanded to know the identity of the model. She was known only as "Miss Emily" and was thought to have worked as a courtesan for the celebrated madam Charlotte Hayes. Journalists described her as a "woman of the town" and called her variously Miss Emily Potts, Warren, Coventry, and Bertie.3 It was also suggested that she had modeled for Romney, and later commentators declared she had been the mistress of Charles Greville.4 Greville acquired the painting for a costly £157 (although letters show he still had not paid by 1786). The novelist Fanny Burney praised the "Thais, for which a Miss Emily, a celebrated courtesan sat, at the desire of the Hon Charles Greville."5 Emily was neither a common name nor a generic name for a prostitute. Greville referred to the model for Thais as "Miss Emily," the same name as he called Emma.6 The evidence all indicates that the model was Emma Lyon—by the time the portrait was exhibited, she had worked for Hayes, modeled for Romney, and was mistress to Greville. Most important of all, the woman in the painting looks exactly like Emma.

Newspaper reports, caricatures, and firsthand accounts suggest Emma also modeled for the Royal Academy of Art in London.7 She must have been either desperate for money or, in contrast to the other Covent Garden girls, interested in the work of artists. Unlike male models, who lined up in designated London streets, competing to be chosen for their rugged physique by flexing their muscles, few women wanted to model. Those who did were usually elderly courtesans from Drury Lane and St. Giles brought by their madams because they were past the age of entrancing clients. James Northcote, artist and assistant to Joshua Reynolds, was horrified by the "battered courtesan" he saw modeling for his master's painting of Iphigenia.8 Their work was exhausting. Models had to stand on a raised dais in the bright light of the top-floor rooms of the Royal Academy until four in winter and six in summer, with short breaks every two hours, attempting to maintain a pose with the help of a staff or a rope hanging from the ceiling. A furious St. Giles madam once broke in and tried to attack an artist for forcing one of her girls to stand nearly naked for a whole day without giving her even a crust of bread. Few madams allowed their