Waldeck said he had traveled to South Africa at age 19 and thereafter had begun a career in exploration. He claimed to have returned to France and studied art as a student of Jacques-Louis David. He said he had traveled to Egypt with Napoleon's expedition. None of this has been independently verified; indeed most of Waldeck's autobiography before about 1820 (including his given birthdate) is undocumented and his name is absent from records of various early expeditions he claimed to have been on.