Born in St Petersburg of a Swiss father and Russian mother, Chevalier moved to Switzerland in 1845 where he studied at the drawing academy affiliated with the Musée Arlaud in Lausanne before studying architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He travelled to London in 1851 to see the Great Exhibition, where he also trained as a lithographer and exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy.

Chevalier arrived in Melbourne in 1854 and found employment on the magazine Melbourne Punch. Alongside his work as a commercial illustrator he also published in 1865 a portfolio of 12 landscape prints, the earliest examples of chromolithography in Australia. Chevalier visited New Zealand in 1865–66, making extensive records of his tour, which he exhibited in Christchurch and Dunedin and in Melbourne at the Intercolonial Exhibition of 1866–67, as well as at the Paris Salon in 1868.

When Queen Victoria’s second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, arrived in Melbourne in 1867 as part of his world tour, Chevalier accompanied the royal party as correspondent for The Illustrated Australian News. Later, he was invited to join the Duke’s entourage for the voyage back to England. His sketches and watercolours documenting the journey were exhibited at the Crystal Palace and at the South Kensington Museum in 1872.

After settling in London in 1870, Chevalier received numerous commissions from the royal family. He also travelled routinely to Switzerland to paint. His influence on the development of the fine arts in Australia remained strong.

Towards the end of his life Chevalier spent his winters in Madeira, where his final watercolours were made. This view shows Loo Rock in Funchal Bay and gives an evocative sense of the terraces of the city in the late 1880s.