Louis Buvelot (who disliked his first name and never used it) worked under Marc-Louis Arland at Lausanne, and from around 1834 continued his studies at Paris with Camille Flers, a well-known landscape painter of the day.

In October 1840 Buvelot moved to Rio de Janeiro and attracted the notice of the emperor Dom Pedro II, who bought some of his pictures and decorated him with the Order of the Rose.

Buvelot having lived in a warm country and finding the cold of Switzerland trying to his health left his family in La Chaux-de-Fonds and sailed from Liverpool bound for Melbourne, Australia in 1864 accompanied by Caroline-Julie Beguin, a teacher.

Arriving in Melbourne in February 1865, Buvelot was in business as a photographer in Bourke Street for a year but soon resumed his painting.

His new wife, Caroline-Julie Beguin, helped by teaching French, and presently he began to find buyers for his pictures, of whom James Smith was one of the earliest.