Eugene Rudier, a man from France

Malvina Hoffman studied in New York and with French sculptor Auguste Rodin. This bronze statue portrays Eugene Rudier, who operated the bronze foundry in Paris that cast most of Rodin's sculptures, as well as Hoffman's. Asked to sculpt a French man, Hoffman asked her friend Rudier to act as a model.

American artist Malvina Hoffman (1885-1966) created 104 bronze figures, busts, and heads for the 1933 exhibition The Races of Mankind. Each sculpture was meant to portray an activity or facial characteristics representative of a racial type. Fifty of the artworks are featured in The Field Museum's 2016 exhibition Looking at Ourselves: Rethinking the Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman.