Appointed to Paris, Henry Prinet lived with his family on rue Bonaparte, a stone's throw from the École des beaux-arts, for which René-Xavier seemed to be destined.

His father painted as a hobby and was supportive of his desire to study art, having him seek the advice of Louis Charles Timbal, a well-known church painter and friend of the family.

He then became friends with the Franche-Comté painters Georges and Lucien Griveau, and with his fellow students at the Beaux-Arts, Antonio de La Gandara, Louis-Auguste Girardot, Félix Desgranges and Jules-Alexis Muenier.

In 1894, René-Xavier Prinet married Jeanne Jaquemin (1865-1958), a native of Bourbonne-les-Bains, whose bust was made by Antoine Bourdelle in 1910, at La Madeleine, Paris.

His parents-in-law, Auguste and Louise-Berthe, residents of Bourbonne-les-Bains and Paris, having built a villa on the seafront of Cabourg around 1870 called the Double Six chalet, he spent his summers there from that time.

Only a few hundred meters separated the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg, where Marcel Proust resided during his many stays in the seaside town, from the Double Six.

At this time, he also became associated with a group of young artists known as the Bande Noire (Black Stripe), which included Lucien Simon, André Dauchez, Émile-René Ménard and Charles Cottet.

He then began teaching with his friends Dauchez, Ménard, Cottet, Simon and Jacques Emile Blanche at the Académie de la Palette, but was not convinced by the seriousness of the course.

The year 1904 saw the creation, with the same friends and Antoine Bourdelle, who taught sculpture classes, of the workshops at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

[2] In 1913, he was appointed Secretary for the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and travelled to the United States; serving on the jury for an exhibition at Carnegie Mellon University.

In 1915 he participated in the 62 illustrations of the National Album of the War, a partly retrospective review of the fighting to which his friends Lucien Simon, Albert Besnard and Emile René Ménard also contributed, as well as painters such as Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Edouard Vuillard.

After the war in 1920, he exhibited with René Ménard, Lucien Simon, Edmond Aman-Jean and Albert Besnard at the first Salon of French Artists in Brussels.

It then organized major exhibitions every year until the Second World War at the Belfort museums, in which René-Xavier Prinet participated along with Georges Fréset, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Jean-Eugène Bersier, Raymond Legueult, Anders Osterlind, Henry de Waroquier, and Jules-Émile Zingg.