"[3] Cabanel was the son of a modest carpenter, and he began his apprenticeship at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts in the class of Charles Matet, curator of the Musée Fabre.

Cabanel entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of seventeen, in 1840, where he studied with François-Édouard Picot.

He gained more recognition with The Birth of Venus, exhibited at the Salon of 1863, and which was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection.

The classical composition embodies ideals of Academic art: a mythological subject, graceful modeling, silky brushwork, and perfected forms.

However, he intervened in 1881 during the presentation of Pertuiset, Le chasseur de lions, by Manet, and defended it by saying: "Gentlemen, there is not one among us who is capable of doing a head like that in the open air!"

A monument was erected to him in 1892 by the architect Jean Camille Formigé, decorated with a marble bust by Paul Dubois and a sculpture, Regret, by Antonin Mercié.