Pierre Émile Leysalle was born in Paris in 1847, and worked under Mathurin Moreau and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. He was professor of sculpture at the École des Arts industriels in Geneva for ten years, and exhibited both his sculptures and medals at the Paris Salon from 1873 to 1905. His monumental Time protected by Truth is in Geneva, and his The Runner in the Lyons Museum. He specialised in allegorical and mythological subjects, as in the present marble.
Leysalle's Daphnis and Chloe was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1876. The lively compositon and movement Leysalle instilled in this group are reminiscent of his master Carpeaux's nymphs in La Danse and Three Graces. As in these sculptures Leysalle created an alluring and lively work in his Daphnis and Chloe, characteristic of the third quarter of the 19th Century.