Edward McCartan (1879-1947) was one of the most refined American sculptors of the early twentieth century, celebrated for his elegantly stylized female figures and his mastery of the Art Deco idiom within the American Beaux-Arts tradition. Born in Albany, New York, McCartan studied at the Pratt Institute with Herbert Adams and at the Art Students League of New York with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil, receiving a thorough grounding in the American sculptural tradition at two of the country's most respected art schools.

McCartan traveled to Paris and worked under the tutelage of Jean-Antoine Injalbert, one of the leading French academic sculptors of the period, whose refined approach to figural sculpture would shape McCartan's mature style at every level. He returned to the United States in 1910, and four years thereafter he was named the Director of the sculpture department at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City, one of the most influential teaching positions available to an American sculptor of his generation. This appointment placed him at the heart of American sculptural education during a formative period in the field.

McCartan is best known for his highly stylized and very refined female forms, which are often accompanied by a hound or a faun. His work is demarcated by its qualities of strength and elegance, and his figures characteristically feature elongated proportions, precisely poised gestures, and the crisp, decorative surfaces that came to define American Art Deco sculpture at its most cultivated. McCartan worked in an Art Deco vein but was not considered a Modernist, and as such he worked mostly within the circle of the National Sculpture Society, the professional organization that supported the American Beaux-Arts and Art Deco sculptural traditions.

McCartan received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including election to the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society. His sculptures are held today in the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and other major American collections, where they remain among the most refined examples of American Art Deco sculpture from the interwar era.