John Claude Nattes

John Claude Nattes c.1765-? was a watercolourist and topographical draughtsman of either French or English origin.

In 1789 Sir Joseph Banks commissioned him to record the buildings of Lincolnshire and this resulted in more than 700 drawings and watercolours, made between 1789 and 1797, which are now preserved in Lincoln Central Library. This body of work provides researchers with a great deal of material with which to study pre-Victorian topography. He was a founder member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, founded in 1804, but he was expelled after two years for exhibiting other peoples’ work as his own. He continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1814.

While many authorities state that he died in 1822, in London, others believe that his death came, in Dover, in 1839.