Louis Etienne Watelet
A naturalistic landscape, dated 1819, by the landscape painter Louis Étienne Watelet. A landscape with a neoclassical composition.
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
Signed and dated 1829 in the lower right corner
Dimensions: 25 x 36 cm
, with frame: 43 x 55 cm
Price: 3500 euros
Louis Etienne Watelet: A Style That Straddles Neoclassicism and Naturalism
Watelet’s painting oscillates between the classical formula of the composed landscape—whose decorative aspect he emphasizes—and a more naturalistic style.
From the neoclassical design, Watelet retains a taste for the layering of planes—which allows him to push back the horizon while enlarging the space—and for the skillful distribution of light.
His style is precise down to the smallest detail and is characterized by elegance and refinement.
Our painting is a good example of this
A scene from everyday life
The scene is classic and idyllic: a river, a watermill, and people going about their daily lives.
The river divides the painting into two banks, on which a group of people—including a fisherman, a woman carrying a basket, a shepherd, and his herd of cows—go about their business.
This harmoniously composed landscape exudes a great sense of serenity.
Biography
Louis Étienne Watelet was a French landscape painter and the son of a Parisian haberdasher.
This self-taught landscape painter, who, according to Charles Gabet, had “no other teachers than nature and his love of art,” seems, however, to have frequented the studios of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Georges Malbeste.
He participated in the Salon de peinture for the first time in 1799 and subsequently exhibited there regularly. He was awarded a second gold medal there in 1810, followed by a first-place medal in 1819, and was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1825.
A prolific painter and avid traveler in pursuit of his art, he explored southern France, Savoie, Italy, Belgium, and Tyrol, and roamed the countryside of Île-de-France. He specialized in historical landscapes, which he depicted in the Romantic style.
Watelet is best known for his role as an art educator. It was in his studio that many distinguished future landscape painters—including Prosper Baccuet, Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny, Paul Delaroche, Abel Dufresne, and Pierre Thuillier—served their apprenticeships.
Bibliography
– Bénézit dictionary.
• “Dictionary of French Landscape Painters” “In the 19th Century” by Lydia Harembourg
• Charles Gabet, “Watelet (Louis-Étienne),” in Dictionary of Artists of the French School in the 19th Century. : Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Engraving, Drawing, Lithography, and Musical Composition, Paris, Madame Vergne, 1831, 710 pp. (read online [archive]), p. 704.
• Gustave Vapereau, *Universal Dictionary of Contemporary Figures*, Paris, 1858.
• Charles de Mourgues, Explanations of Works of Painting and Sculpture, Paris, 1833.
Museums
– Paris, Louvre Museum
• Aix-en-Provence
• Bordeaux
• Carcassonne, Museum of Fine Arts.
• Coutances, Quesnel-Morinière Museum.
• Dijon, Magnin Museum.
• Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum.
• Montpellier, Fabre Museum
• Versailles, National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon.
• Vienna, Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology: View of a cloth factory in the city of Vienna, 1837.
Source
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Étienne_Watelet
