Nothing is known about Châtelet's early training as an artist, though he quickly made his mark as one of the talented young landscapists who made hundreds of drawings and watercolors for two important travel books published in the 1780s: the Abbé de Saint-Non's Voyage Pittoresque ou Description historique des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicilie (Paris, 1781-1786); and Jean Benjamin de Laborde's Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques, physiques, historiques, moraux, politiques, littéraires de la Suisse (Paris, 1780-1786). An ardent republican, Châtelet later achieved a different sort of notoriety when he was sentenced to death by the revolutionary tribunal in 1794, and was guillotined in May of that year. (Margaret Morgan Grasselli, National Gallery of Art)