Edouard-Alexandre Odier was the son of Antoine and Suzanne Odier. He studied art under Coutain and Ingres.
In 1833 Charles Paul Landon in his Annales du musée et de l'école moderne des beaux-arts: Salon, described Odier as 'amateur' (he did not mean this as a criticism), his works either being the product of his imagination, or offering technical challenges.
When Whistler was studying in Paris, he painted a Copy after Odier's 'Episode de la retraite de Moscou' y017. It was taken from the Episode de la retraite de Moscou of 1832 (261 x 198 cm; Musée de Picardie, Amiens) by Edouard-Alexandre Odier. This had been exhibited at the Salon of 1833 as 'Dragon de la garde impériale - étude', and was awarded a second-class medal; it went on exhibition in the Musée du Luxembourg in the same year.
Landon, Charles Paul, Annales du musée et de l'école moderne des beaux-arts: Salon de 1833, Paris, 1833, p. 136, plate 68, line image, 'Fremy Del, Normand fils sc.' Foucart, Jacques, 'Napoléon 1er, Musée de Picardie, Amiens, 1969', Revue de l'Art, no. 8, 1970, pp. 76-7, painting by Odier repr. p. 77, fig. 2. MacDonald, Margaret F., 'What is a Whistler?', James McNeill Whistler in Context. Essays from the Whistler Centenary Symposium, University of Glasgow, 2003, ed. by Lee Glazer, Margaret F. MacDonald, Linda Merrill, and Nigel Thorp, Washington, DC, 2008, pp. 1–18, pp. 6-7. Robertson, Pamela, 'Whistler's St Luc', in Hermens, Erma et al. (eds.), Connecting Whistler, Glasgow, 2010, pp. 10-15 (Online). 'Édouard Odier', Wikipedia.