Louis Etienne Watelet - The Water Mill

Louis Etienne WATELET Paris, 1780 – Paris, 1866 Oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm (94 x 110 cm) Signed and dated lower right “WATELET / 1840” On the back of the painting is a handwritten note indicating the title and provenance of the painting (see photo) Very beautiful 19th century frame in carved and gilded wood Louis-Etienne Watelet is said to have learned to paint as an autodidact, but his great mastery of historical landscapes in the neoclassical style suggests a possible stint in the studio of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. He exhibited at the Salon in Paris from 1799, first Italianate landscapes, then landscapes of the Ile-de-France region between 1808 and the early 1830s. He then enjoyed success with his neoclassical landscapes of great finesse and in a style close to Valenciennes and Bertin. About his neoclassical landscapes, the art critic Marmottan praises "his clean and delicate foliage, his very artistic groups of trees; he excels in painting waterfalls and lakes" and "his work is recommended for the freshness of the colors and the lightness of the touch". And Augustin Jal notes that "the waters were in all his works a particularly happy detail". Watelet, the official painter. Watelet had a studio in Paris for men and women from the 1810s and he had as students many great landscape painters who would become famous such as Prosper Barbot, Edouard Bertin, Caruelle d'Aligny, Desgoffe and Lapito. Watelet went to Italy in the early 1820s and it was after his View of Lake Nemi (1824) that he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1825. A painter of easel paintings, he was also a painter of large-format paintings in the 1820s. From this period date a large painting for the Galerie de Diane at the Château de Fontainebleau ("Henri IV and Captain Michaux") and a "Site des Vosges", a twelve-foot canvas that was greatly admired by Louis XVIII himself. Watelet also painted many paintings for the King of Prussia in the 1820s. Our painting is dated 1840 when Watelet was still at the height of his art. We see all the qualities of the painter in this very fine, very delicate painting, with beautiful colors and many picturesque and charming details such as the fisherman, the couple in conversation as well as the architectural details of a beautiful water mill dating from the middle of the 19th century.