John Claude Nattes 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. Nattes accompanied John Stoddart on his tours of Scotland in 1799 and 1800 and contributed illustrations to his Remarks on Local Scenery and Manners in Scotland.
Nattes produced some of the earliest examples of watercolour painting in Britain. He was associated with the founding 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.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography Nattes died in London in 1822. However he may have died in Dover, in 1839.