Carl Johan Eldh [commonly known as Carl J. Eldh; and as Carl Eldh] was born in Östhammar, Uppland, Sweden on 10 May 1873 and was the son of Jan Petter Eldh, a blacksmith. In 1892 he entered the Tekniska skolan (Konstfack) in Stockholm. In 1897 he went to Paris and over the next seven years studied at the Académie Colarossi. Whilst in Paris he represented Sweden at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 with his sculpture Oskuld (innocence). Eldh returned to Stockholm in 1894 and subsequently became one of the most prominent sculptors in Sweden, collaborating with some of the country's leading architects on architectural sculpture projects. He produced several portrait busts and sculptures of many of the cultural personalities of its time, including the writer August Strindberg, the poet Gustaf Fröding and the painter Ernst Josephson, notable among which was the Rodin-inspired Strindberg monument in Tegnérlunden, Stockholm (1916).