The son of the sculptor Claude Michallon, Achille-Etna Michallon was orphaned at an early age. A precocious and gifted artist, he received his training with Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Jean-Victor Bertin, Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunuoy and Jacques-Louis David. (He also seems to have studied Alphonse Mandevare’s Principes raisonnés du paysage, a practical guide to the landscape drawing published in 1804.) Michallon first exhibited at the Paris Salon* in 1812, at the age of fifteen, and received a second-class medal.

Among his earliest works were a series of landscape illustrations for accounts of exotic voyages, notably Le voyage d’Ali Bey en Abassi en Afrique et en Asie pendant les années 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 et 1807, ...