Pierre-Jules Cavelier was a French academic sculptor.

Son of a silversmith and furniture maker, student of the sculptors David d'Angers

Pierre Jean David

Pierre-Jean David , usually called David d'Angers, was a French sculptor.He was born at Angers. His father was a sculptor or a mason, but had gone into the army as a musketeer, fighting against the Chouans of La Vendée. He returned to his trade at the end of the civil war to find his customers...

 and the painter Paul Delaroche, Cavelier won the Prix de Rome

Prix de Rome

The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...

 in 1842 with a plaster statue of Diomedes

Diomedes

Diomedes or Diomed is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War.He was born to Tydeus and Deipyle and later became King of Argos, succeeding his maternal grandfather, Adrastus. In Homer's Iliad Diomedes is regarded alongside Ajax as one of the best warriors of all...

 Entering the Palladium

Palladium

Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...

. The young sculptor lived at the Villa Medici from 1843 to 1847.

Appointed in 1864 Professor at the École des beaux-arts

École des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...

, he trained many students there, including Edouard Lanteri

Edouard Lanteri

Edouard Lanteri was a sculptor and medallist whose romantic French style of sculpting was seen as influential among exponents of New Sculpture.-Life history:...

, Hippolyte Lefèbvre

Hippolyte Lefèbvre

Hippolyte-Jules Lefèbvre was an academic French sculptor and medallist who received numerous official marks of recognition in his day but is now largely forgotten...

, Louis-Ernest Barrias

Louis-Ernest Barrias

Louis-Ernest Barrias was a French sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school.He was born in Paris into a family of artists. His father was a porcelain-painter, and his older brother Félix-Joseph Barrias a well-known painter...

, Eugène Guillaume

Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume

Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume was a French sculptor.-Biography:He was born at Montbard, Côte-d'Or. He studied under Cavelier, Millet, and Barrias, at the École des Beaux-Arts, which he entered in 1841, and where he gained the prix de Rome in 1845 with "Theseus finding on a rock his...

, the British Alfred Gilbert

Alfred Gilbert

Sir Alfred Gilbert was an English sculptor and goldsmith who enthusiastically experimented with metallurgical innovations...

 and the American George Grey Barnard

George Grey Barnard

'George Grey Barnard was an American sculptor, "an excellent American sculptor", the French art dealer René Gimpel reported in his diary , "very much engrossed in carving himself a fortune out of the trade in works of art." His lasting monument, rather than any sculpture of his own, is the...

, as well as conducting his own prolific career as a sculptor.

Works

• Two caryatids, sketch group, terracotta, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1854
• Paris on the exterior of the Gare du Nord
  Gare du Nord
  Paris Nord is one of the six large terminus railway stations of the SNCF mainline network for Paris, France. It offers connections with several urban transportation lines, including Paris Métro and RER...
  
  , Paris
• Cornélie, Mother of Gracchi group, marble, Paris, Orsay Museum, 1861
• Angel on the bell tower, Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois
  Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois
  The Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois is situated at 2, Place du Louvre, Paris 75001; the nearest Métro station is Louvre-Rivoli.Located at the center of Paris, by the Seine and near the Louvre, this former parish of the kings of France is generally regarded as the Church of the Louvre...
  
  , Paris