Louis Étienne Watelet

Nevertheless, he is known to have frequented the studios of the painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and the engraver, Georges Malbeste [fr].

[1] He was a prolific painter who travelled widely to work en plein aire; visiting the south of France, Savoy, Italy (which had a significant effect on his work), Belgium and the Tyrol.

He strove to give his landscapes a historical feeling, in the Romantic style.

His works were generally popular, but the fierce and caustic art critic, Théophile Gautier proclaimed, after the Salon of 1833, that "As for Watelet and his like, it is impossible for them to be more worthless.

[2] Many notable landscape painters served their apprenticeship in his workshop at the École des Beaux-arts; notably Prosper Baccuet, Théodore Caruelle d'Aligny, Paul Delaroche, Abel Dufresne [fr], Jacques Guiaud and Pierre Thuillier.