Son of the painter Carlo Giuseppe Cavalli and Francesca Motta, he left Santa Maria Maggiore (Ossola Valley) for France when his family moved there in 1855.

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War impelled the Cavalli family to move first to Paris, then to Marseille, where Enrico met and frequented Adolphe Monticelli, whose teachings on the subject of light and colour greatly influenced the young Italian painter.

[citation needed] The Cavalli family returned to Santa Maria Maggiore, where Carlo Giuseppe and Enrico taught at the local Rossetti Valentini Art School[1] from 1881 until 1892.

Enrico succeeded in stimulating and involving his students – who included the brilliant Carlo Fornara, Giovanni Battista Ciolina, Gian Maria Rastellini, and Lorenzo Peretti Junior – through the study of the great masters and practical experience en plein air, according to the rules of modernity he had learnt in France.

The school's Administrative Commission announced a competition to replace Carlo Giuseppe Cavalli without taking into consideration the decade-long experience of his son, who abandoned the field in protest.