STONINGTON – She was best known as a painter and sculptor, but Emily Lansingh Muir’s life stretched far beyond her studio.

Muir – the artist, peace activist, environmentalist, writer, architect and visionary – died in her home Wednesday night surrounded by friends. She was 99.

“Emily truly was one of the most remarkable people we’ve met, here or anywhere else, in our lives,” Peter Ralston, executive vice president of the Island Institute in Rockland, said by phone Thursday. “She was a very fine artist and so, so much more.”

Muir was born in Chicago in 1904 and spent summers on Deer Isle with her parents. She attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for a year, but she didn’t care much for the dress code – she wanted to wear knickers and men’s shoes – so she left for the Art Students League in New York. There, she met her husband, the sculptor and watercolorist William Muir. In 1939, the couple moved to Stonington, long before it became a popular destination for artists.

“She was a very progressive, forward-thinking artist who set the example for others who have come to Maine to work,” said Chris Crosman, director of the Farnsworth Art Museum, which held an exhibition of Muir’s work last summer. “She showed other artists that it is possible to be free-spirited, modern, on the edge [geographically] and make a go of it.”

She and Bill, whom friends described as the love of her life, definitely made a splash in Stonington. On the cove near their house, they built a saltwater pool where Bill taught the local children how to swim. Emily joined the local school board.

At the same time, she stayed active in the art world. President Eisenhower appointed her as the first woman to serve on the National Commission of Fine Arts, and President Nixon appointed her to the advisory committee of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Closer to home, she adopted her own causes. When road construction in Liberty forced Haystack Mountain School of Crafts to look for a new home, the directors said they wouldn’t look on the coast because there wasn’t any affordable land left.

“She thought that was ridiculous,” said Susan Steed, a friend of Muir’s who helped run her gallery. “She found them a parcel of land.”

Then she bought her own parcel of land on Crockett Cove, where she designed and built a group of contemporary homes meant to blend with the landscape. At a time when it was standard practice for contractors to completely clear the trees from house lots, Muir, a self-taught architect, worked around the trees. She brought elements of the outdoors – such as stone pathways and sunken gardens – indoors. And she finished off each house with a signature piece of art, such as her pebble mosaics. Her attention to detail paid off – she won Design International’s Outstanding Achievement Award for her work.

“You can criticize my paintings anytime, but not my houses,” she wrote.

In the early 1980s, when many East Coast towns experienced rapid development in the form of condominiums and subdivisions, Muir was committed to responsible growth within the Deer Isle-Stonington community. She wanted to preserve the way of life that she had come to love without sacrificing economic opportunities for the island’s residents. So she became a founding member of the Island Institute.

“She shared our vision of sustainable, vital, working communities on the coast,” Ralston said. “She wanted to see the working communities … be able to sustain their traditional ways even while improvements and advances were made. She did not want to see them become homogenized as so much of the Eastern Seaboard is.”

She did everything with passion and conviction. Though art experts agree that Muir’s work – big, bold canvases of the land, sea and people around her – was underappreciated in the art world, Muir spent much of her time trying to get her paintings shown. She kept painting and sculpting until well into her 90s, when her failing eyesight made it nearly impossible to continue. Then, in need of something else to occupy her time, she became a regular contributor to the Island Ad-Vantage, Deer Isle’s newspaper. Her column, “Muir’s Mutterings,” appeared weekly.

“Emily’s mantra was, ‘I have to be productive,'” Steed said.

As friends gathered in her home Wednesday night to sort through Muir’s personal effects, one of them picked up a paperweight. Muir had placed a sticker on the bottom – from one of those old label makers that stamped letters into colored tape.

It read, “Do something.” And she did.