Bourdelle was born at Montauban in France. In 1876 he won a scholarship to study at the École des Beaux−Arts in Toulouse. In 1893 he was engaged as an assistant in the studio of Auguste Rodin.His first monumental works include his Monument to the Fighters and Defenders of Tarn−et−Garonne that commemorates local resistance in the years 1870−1871 during the Prusso−French war. Bourdelle’s design was not favourably received, but he was awarded the commission in 1897 after Rodin interceded. The resultant work reflected an emerging social interest in monuments to the fallen and became an model for the modern war memorial. In 1909 he created one of his key sculptures Hercules the Archer that was a tribute to classical Greek sculpture. In 1913 he created for the Théâtre des Champs−Élysées reliefs representing the Muses, freely based on classical sculpture and enlivened by strikingly concise expression of movement. Typical of his oeuvre was a striving to revive monumental sculpture on the model of Ancient Greece and early mediaeval sculpture. Bourdelle regarded himself as a mediaeval craftsman.