Louisa Lander (1826–1923) was a member of the expatriate community of American women sculptors who settled in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century, led by Charlotte Cushman and Harriet Hosmer.

Her family home in Danvers, Massachusetts was decorated with carvings by the Skillin brothers and Samuel McIntire, and she studied these works to fuel her artistic ambitions.

[2] In 1855 Lander went to Rome, where she joined the circle of American women expatriate artists that included Harriet Hosmer, Anne Whitney, Edmonia Lewis, and Emma Stebbins, a group satirized by novelist Henry James as the "white marmorean flock.

[6] Reception of Virginia Dare may also have been colored by a personal scandal that negatively impacted Lander's standing in the circle of American artists in Rome.

During that time, rumors had circulated that Lander had, in her cousin John Rogers' words, "lived on uncommonly good terms with some man here," or that she had posed as a nude model.

In May 1861, after the outbreak of the American Civil War, she moved to Washington, DC, and volunteered as a nurse in local hospitals, where she also continued to pursue her sculptural career.