Stella Elkins Tyler (1884-1963) began serious work as a sculptor in the early 1930s when she was almost 50 years old, studying under Boris Blai, a former student of Auguste Rodin. She held her first solo exhibition in 1935 at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City and her third and last in 1959 at the Woodmere Art Gallery in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Over roughly two and a half decades, she created and displayed approximately 150 sculptural designs, mostly small but some nearly life-size, and eventually had nearly all of them cast in bronze by the Roman Bronze Works in Corona, New York, with most of the bronzes being unique. Closely connected to the cultural life of Philadelphia and New York and supported by a Gilded-Age fortune, she later turned to philanthropy and donated both of her estates to create educational institutions, a legacy that has helped tens of thousands of students discover their creative abilities. Her works included Castalia (1935), inspired by the Greco-Roman story of Castalia and Apollo; an untitled 1936 wall fountain based on Harriet Whitney Frishmuth's Joy of the Waters; Cat Masks (1937), derived from a detail of her family crest; Death and Transfiguration (1934), which drew on Richard Strauss' tone poem and her own interpretation of a religious theme; Pensive Mood or Thoughtful Mood (1939), possibly echoing Rodin's The Thinker while emphasizing a woman's intellect; Sunset, also exhibited as Grief, and Sunrise (1938), presenting the cycle of night and day; La Cucaracha (1936), reflecting layered references to contemporary culture; and Timeless Offerings (2000), a later homage by John Mathews, Jon Burns, and Catia Whitmore that replaced a lost fountain sculpture from her era.