Sculptor. Born in Paris to a working-class family of Huguenot background, he was raised in an atmosphere of being separate from religion and Republican socialism. He was the pupil of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who sponsored him for the Petite École (future École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs), where he sympathized with Alphonse Legros and Fantin-Latour. In 1854 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the François-Joseph Duret classroom. Though he officially acknowledged all three artists as teachers, Jules always considered Carpeaux his real master. The curriculum and relationship particularly with Duret proved unfriendly and not much fun to be with for the younger artist. His failure to win the Prix de Rome after four tries, from 1861 to 1865, contributed to a lifelong hostility to the institutional power and vision of the Academy.  He combined the vivacity and richness of Carpeaux, he was, after all, one of the most distinguished modellers of his time,  with the academic insistence on harmonious outlines and scholarly familiarity with the work of Giambologna, Pierre Puget, Peter Paul Rubens and others. He started to work for decorators, and there met Rodin with which began their friendship. He made a quiet living providing decorative sculpture for the structures that lined Paris’s new boulevards and providing wax models for jewelry. Jules married Irma Vuillier, a partnership that lasted throughout his life; they had one daughter, Georgette, who was mentally handicapped and required constant care. His Daphnis and Chloe shown at the Paris salon of 1869, was purchased by the State. Jules executed a remarkable series of terra-cotta statuettes and groups, such as A French Peasant Woman and The Reader; a series of Boulogne women, such as A Woman of Boulogne telling her Beads; and a series of informal terracotta portrait busts of friends and acquaintances, rarely signed. He was commissioned to produce the large public fountain called Charity, erected at the back of the Royal Exchange (1878), and for Queen Victoria a monument to two young granddaughters in her private chapel at Windsor (1878). Upon his return to France, Jules found himself well known and in demand. He devoted the remainder of his career largely to socially useful projects, particularly monuments and the portraiture of great men.  He worked for years on a person project, the Monument to Workers, which was never executed, it remained in the state of sketches and models. His last posthumous works were a statue of Lazare Hoche in Quiberon (1902), the Monument to Gambetta in Bordeaux (1904), the Monument to Émile Levassor (1907) and the Monument to Scheurer-Kestner (1908) in Paris. Jules, who was awarded the Grand Prix of the Exposition Universelle (1889), was made a commander of the Legion of Honor. He was one of the founders of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and was the first president of the sculpture section. (bio by: Shock)