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 there 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 taught himself to paint, 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 in 1799, first Italianate landscapes, then landscapes of the Ile-de-France between 1808 and the beginning of the 1830s. He then enjoyed success with his neoclassical landscapes of great finesse and in a style close to Valenciennes and Bertin.
Regarding 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 a particularly happy detail in all his works". Watelet, the official painter. Watelet had a studio in Paris for men and women from the 1810s and he had as pupils 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 Honour 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.

Ref: 3LPKUJ8U0W