Having learnt to cast and chase bronze from his father, who was a metal-turner, Mêne began his career by executing models for porcelain manufacturers and making small-scale sculptures for the commercial market. Mêne received his first professional lessons from the sculptor René Compaire and augmented these with anatomical studies and life drawings of animals in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. From 1838 he regularly exhibited animal sculptures at the Salon. His statuettes and groups, such as Flemish Cow and her Calf (wax, 1845; Paris, Musée d’Orsay), depicted the animal world with great physical precision. Pierre-Jules Mêne even made sculptures of horses, such as Ibrahim, an Arab Horse Brought from Egypt (exhibited at the Salon of 1843), Djinn, Barb Stallion (exh. Salon 1849) and the Winner of the Derby (exhibited at the Salon of 1863). Mène was distinguished from other animal sculptors by his well-developed sense of business. Mêne established his own foundry, where he formed a partnership with his son-in-law Auguste-Nicolas Cain, also an animal sculptor; they published a catalogue of their works, which could be ordered directly from the studio. The wide dissemination of reproductions of Mène’s works ensured his popularity in France and abroad, especially in England.