Joseph Mozier (1812-1870) was one of the notable American Neoclassical sculptors of the mid-nineteenth century, whose work in Italy contributed to the important American expatriate sculptural community that flourished there during the antebellum decades. Mozier was part of a circle of American Neoclassical marble carvers in Florence and Rome that included Hiram Powers, Horatio Greenough, and Chauncey Bradley Ives, artists who together established the American presence within the great European tradition of marble sculpture.

Shortly after 1845, Mozier moved his family to Florence and took lessons under Hiram Powers, the most successful American sculptor of his generation and the creator of the famous Greek Slave. The relationship between the two men did not end well, however, and Mozier eventually shifted his practice to Rome, where the American sculptor Thomas Crawford was also working. Rome offered its own distinguished community of expatriate American artists, and the city's unrivaled marble resources, artisanal traditions, and proximity to classical models continued to draw ambitious American sculptors throughout the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Mozier is often noted for the distinctly American subjects that appear in many of his major works. His Pocahontas and The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, the latter derived from James Fenimore Cooper's 1829 romance novel, drew on American history and literature to produce sculpture that spoke directly to American audiences while still working within the classical vocabulary of contemporary European practice. His decision to draw from American literary and historical sources placed him within the important nineteenth-century tradition of creating an authentically American classical art from imported European models.

His Prodigal Son at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Undine at Yale University are among his most celebrated works and stand as singular contributions to the history of American marble sculpture. Mozier's works are held today in significant American museum and private collections, where they remain vital documents of the ambitious American expatriate sculptural tradition of the mid-nineteenth century.