Born in Vesoul on November 29, 1863, Muenier studied under Jean L. Gérôme (1824–1904) at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a close friend of the Realist artist Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929). Muenier lived most of his life in the areas surrounding Vesoul; living in the village of Coulevon in Gérôme's former mansion. Many of his paintings capture the villagers of Coulevon during their daily activities and he often used a camera to capture these moments. Muenier was among the group of young artists who followed the lead of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884) in the creation of sensitively rendered Naturalist images of the lives of the common people of the French countryside.