As the poet Rilke and the scholar Albert Elsen emphasized, Rodin was the master of sculpting hands. Rodin found the hand the most expressive part of the body and often made hands as independent works.

In the case of the "Left Hand of Pierre Wiessant," cut off above the wrist from a life size figure, the hand alone expresses the resolve and torment with which Pierre Wiessant left Calais on the road to his expected death.