Louis Watelin studied under Emile Diaz and worked alongside him in the forests of Fontainebleau and under Ämile van Marcke, his subsequent father-in-law. He was a Barbizon school painter who travelled in Holland and in Persia (with the archeologist J. de Morgan on his expedition of 1889-1890). He made his Paris Salon debut in 1870 and was a medal winner in 1876, 1888 and again in 1889 at the Exposition Universelle of that year.