Thomas François Cartier was a French sculptor and a late practitioner of the animalier style, a mid-19th century trend of naturalistic yet romanticized portrayals of animals both in painting and sculpture. Cartier specialized in model-sized work of hunting dogs and big cats which were often placed within clocks and other decorative objects. He was born on February 21, 1879 in Marseilles, France, and while little has been written on Cartier, he is known to have participated in the Paris Salons from 1904 onwards, for which he won a Gold Medal in 1927. Cartier died in 1943.