Émile Munier was born in Paris on June 2, 1840 and lived with his family at 66 rue des Fossés, St Marcel.
His father, Pierre François Munier, was an upholstery artist at the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins and his mother, Marie Louise Carpentier, was a polisher in a cashmere cloth mill.
Emile, and his older brother François Joseph (born in 1839), went to the local communal school.
By the time their younger brother was born the family’s fortune had improved and Florimond Louis, who was born on September 11, 1851, was enrolled in a boarding school.
All three brothers displayed an early gift for drawing and each had produced a pastel self-portrait between the ages of 13 and 14 - Emile’s is dated 1854.