Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is known for an innovative sculptural style in which the traces of his working process are conserved in their works' final form. His career began in Brussels and only later shifted to Paris, where he undertook public commissions that dovetailed with academic trends affirming clarity in sculptural language. These afforded him the support to pursue bolder aesthetic experimentation in private. Rodin's attention to partial figures and fragmentation and his privileging of emotive pathos over allegory are hallmarks of his groundbreaking and influential style.

Rachel Corbett is the author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, which won the 2016 Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing. Her essays and journalism have appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and other publications. She wrote the introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Painter (2017), published by David Zwirner Books.

Elisabeth Chase Geissbuhler was twenty years old when she moved to Paris from Boston to study sculpture under Antoine Bourdelle. Bourdelle, who was fond of Elisabeth, had been Rodin's close friend and collaborator. When Geissbuhler translated Rodin's Cathedrals of France in 1965, she was already a recognized Rodin scholar. She continued her exploration of Rodin and his philosophical and artistic influences until her death in 2001.