Leila Usher

Bas-relief portrait of paleontologist Nathaniel Shaler, c. 1909

Leila Woodman Usher was born in Onalaska, Wisconsin on August 26, 1859, to parents Isaac Lane Usher and Susannah Coffin Woodman. She was a pupil of English sculptor H. H. Kitson in Boston, American George Brewster in Cambridge, and Irish-American Augustus Saint-Gaudens in New York, and also studied abroad in Paris and Rome.

Her best-known work is a 1902 bust of educator Booker T. Washington commissioned by the Tuskegee Institute. She produced bas-relief portraits of many other prominent figures such as social reformer Susan B. Anthony, scholar Francis James Child, minister Elijah Kellogg, and geologist John Wesley Powell.

Usher received the Bronze Medal at the 1895 Atlanta Exposition, and her work was also awarded at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Usher's sculptures are held in the collections of institutions such as Bowdoin College, Bryn Mawr College, Hampton University, Johns Hopkins University, and Radcliffe College.

She died at St. Luke's Hospital in New York on August 13, 1955, aged 95.