He was taught by the French sculptor Miguel Verdiguier at Cordova, and at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.

In 1804 he executed a statue of Ganymede while in Paris, now in the Museo del Prado, which gained him immediate recognition as a leading sculptor.

This son, Don Jose Alvarez y Bougel, also distinguished himself as a sculptor and a painter but died at Burgos before reaching the age of twenty-five.

[2] One of the most successful works of the elder Álvarez was a group representing Antilochus and Memnon, which was commissioned in marble (1818) by Ferdinand VII.

[1] After his return to Madrid, he taught at the Academy of San Fernando, where one of his pupils was the young Ponciano Ponzano (1813–1877), later to become one of the most famous of Spanish neoclassical sculptors of his day.