Bertin was trained initially as a history painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but turned to landscape painting early on in his career. In 1816 he entered the studio of Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld and two years later he joined the studio of Louis-Etienne Watelet, also a landscape painter.
But it was in Jean Victor Bertin's (1767-1842) studio that Edouard Bertin (no relation) met his future sketching companions, Corot and Théodore Caruelle d'Aligny (1798-1871).
In 1827 Bertin returned to Paris from a two-year stay in Italy to join Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as a pupil in his studio. While in Italy he executed a large number of drawings mostly of views of Italian hill towns and famous sites.
