Attributed To Claude-louis Chatelet (1753 - 1795) Fishermen Under A Bridge, Around 1780

Attributed to Claude-Louis CHATELET (1753 - 1795) Fishermen under a bridge, circa 1780 Pen and brown ink, watercolor Dimensions: 31 x 48 cm Foxing – slight folds Presented in a Louis XVI style gilded wooden frame Claude-Louis Chatelet is a French painter, draftsman and engraver, born in 1753 in Paris. He quickly acquired a reputation as a landscape painter, which led to his being chosen as one of the main illustrators of one of the most important works of the late 18th century, the Voyage Pittoresque or Description of the Kingdoms of Naples and of Sicily, published in four volumes between 1781 and 1786 by the Abbot of Saint-Non. He then went to Italy in 1777, in the company of Vivant Denon, to produce 132 engraved drawings of Naples, Puglia, the Basilicata region, Calabria and Sicily. On his return to France, he contributed to the illustration of albums representing the Trianon and its gardens, at the request of Queen Marie-Antoinette, of whom he was one of the favorite painters. The queen ordered a certain number of album paintings from him which she offered to her distinguished visitors such as King Gustav III of Sweden, Emperor Joseph II of Austria, brother of Marie-Antoinette, and Archduke Ferdinand, other brother of the queen. It was during this period that he executed a series of paintings representing castles and parks and gardens in Île-de-France, which were found in the private collections of amateurs such as the Abbot of Saint-Non himself. , or even Richard Mique, first architect of Louis XVI, and whom Marie-Antoinette chose for the design of the buildings forming the Hameau de la Reine. It then represents the parks and gardens of the new residences built during the last decades of the 18th century around Paris, such as the Château de Maupertuis and its pyramid, Bellevue, the Folie Saint-James de Neuilly or the Petit Trianon estate. He also illustrated an edition of La Nouvelle Héloïse, and we also know from Châtelet many animated landscapes of Switzerland, Italy and England. Seduced by revolutionary ideas, he became a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal and was part of the jury that sent Mique to the guillotine. Imprisoned after the fall of Robespierre and victim of the Thermidorian reaction, he was condemned to the guillotine on May 6, 1795 and executed the next day, at the same time as Fouquier-Tinville.