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Hubert Robert

August 16, 2023

Hubert Robert (French pronunciation: ​[ybɛʁ ʁɔbɛʁ]; 22 May 1733 – 15 April 1808) was a French painter in the school of Romanticism, noted especially for his landscape paintings and capricci, or semi-fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France.[1]

Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
Born22 May 1733
Paris, France
Died15 April 1808(1808-04-15) (aged 74)
Paris, France

Biography

Early years

Hubert Robert was born in Paris in 1733. His father, Nicolas Robert, was in the service of François-Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine. Young Robert finished his studies with the Jesuits at the Collège de Navarre in 1751 and entered the atelier of the sculptor Michel-Ange Slodtz who taught him design and perspective but encouraged him to turn to painting. In 1754 he left for Rome in the train of Étienne-François de Choiseul, son of his father's employer, who had been named French ambassador and would become a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Louis XV in 1758.

In Rome

 
The Artist's Studio, 1760, Städelsches Kunstinstitut

He spent fully eleven years in Rome, a remarkable length of time; after the young artist's official residence at the French Academy in Rome ran out, he supported himself by works he produced for visiting connoisseurs like the abbé de Saint-Non, who took Robert to Naples in April 1760 to visit the ruins of Pompeii. The marquis de Marigny, director of the Bâtiments du Roi kept abreast of his development in correspondence with Natoire, director of the French Academy, who urged the pensionnaires to sketch out-of-doors, from nature: Robert needed no urging; drawings from his sketchbooks document his travels: Villa d'Este, Caprarola.

The contrast between the ruins of ancient Rome and the life of his time excited his keenest interest. He worked for a time in the studio of Giovanni Paolo Panini, whose influence can be seen in the Vue imaginaire de la galerie du Louvre en ruine (illustration). Robert spent his time in the company of young artists in the circle of Piranesi, whose capricci of romantically overgrown ruins influenced him so greatly that he gained the nickname Robert des ruines.[2] The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career.[3]

He is reported to have carved his name into the walls of the Colosseum in 1767.[4]

In Paris

 
The Artist in His Cell (1793), ink, wash, watercolor, and chalk, 22.7 x 32.7 cm., Musée Carnavalet

His success on his return to Paris in 1765 was rapid: the following year he was received by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, with a Roman capriccio, The Port of Rome, ornamented with different Monuments of Architecture, Ancient and Modern.[5] Robert's first exhibition at the Salon of 1767, consisting of thirteen paintings and a number of drawings, prompted Denis Diderot to write: "The ideas which the ruins awake in me are grand." Robert subsequently showed work at every Salon until 1802.[6] He was successively appointed "Designer of the King's Gardens", "Keeper of the King's Pictures" and "Keeper of the Museum and Councilor to the Academy".[7]

Robert was arrested in October 1793, during the French Revolution.[8] During the ten months of his detention at Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare he made many drawings, painted at least 53 canvases, and painted numerous vignettes of prison life on plates.[6] He was freed one week after the fall of Robespierre.[9] Robert narrowly escaped the guillotine when through error another prisoner with a similar name was guillotined in his place.[10]

Subsequently, he was placed on the committee of five in charge of the new national museum at the Palais du Louvre.

The Revolution also resulted in the destruction of some of Robert's work; his painting Péché Cardinal (ca.1799) is one that is thought to be lost or destroyed in a fire.[citation needed] Robert had designed the decorations for a little theatre in the new wing at the location of the current staircase Gabriel in the Palace of Versailles. Designed to seat about 500, this theatre was built from the summer of 1785 and opened in early 1786. It was intended to serve as an ordinary court theatre, replacing the Theatre of the Princes Court which was too old and too small, but was destroyed during the time of Louis Philippe. A watercolour of Robert's design is in the National Archives in Paris.[11]

Robert died of a stroke on 15 April 1808.

Style and legacy

 
A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple

The quantity of his work is immense, comprising perhaps one thousand paintings and ten thousand drawings.[6] The Louvre alone contains nine paintings by his hand and specimens are frequently to be met with in provincial museums and private collections. Robert's work has more or less of that scenic character which justified his selection by Voltaire to paint the decorations of his theatre at Ferney.

His work was much engraved by the abbé de Saint-Non, with whom he had visited Naples in the company of Fragonard during his early days; in Italy his work has also been frequently reproduced by Chatelain, Linard, Le Veau, and others.

He is noted for the liveliness and point with which he treated the subjects he painted. Equally at ease painting small easel pictures or huge decorations, he worked quickly using an alla prima technique.[12] Along with this incessant activity as an artist, his daring character and many adventures attracted general admiration and sympathy. In the fourth canto of his L'Imagination Jacques Delille celebrated Robert's miraculous escape when lost in the catacombs.

Robert and picturesque gardens

 
Cypresses (1773), 300 x 75 cm., Hermitage
 
Triumphal Column (1773), 300 x 74 cm., Hermitage

Enterprising and prolific, Robert also acted in a role similar to that of a modern-day art director, conceptualizing fashionably dilapidated gardens for several aristocratic clients, summarized by his possible intervention at Ermenonville; there he would have been working with the architect Jean-Marie Morel for the marquis de Girardin, who was the author of Compositions des paysages (1777) and had distinct views of his own. In 1786 he began his better documented[13] collaboration at Méréville, with his most significant patron, the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde, who found François-Joseph Bélanger's plans too expensive and perhaps too formal.

Though documents are again lacking, Hubert Robert's name is invariably invoked in connection with Marie Antoinette's 'premier architecte' Richard Mique through several phases of the creation of an informal landscape garden at the Petit Trianon, and the setting of the petit hameau. Robert's contribution to garden design was not in making practical ground plans for improvements but in providing atmospheric inspiration for the proposed effect.[14] At Ermenonville and at Méréville "Hubert Robert's paintings both recorded and inspired", according to W.H. Adams:[15] Robert's four large ruin fantasies, painted in 1787 for Méréville[16] may be searched in vain for direct connections with the garden. Hubert's paintings of the Moulin Joly of his friend Claude-Henri Watelet render the fully-grown atmosphere of a garden that had been under way since 1754. His set of six Italianate landscape panels painted for Bagatelle[17] were not the inspiration for the formal turfed parterre set in the thinned woodlands, designed by Bélanger; the later picturesque extensions of Bagatelle were carried out by its Scottish gardener, William Blaikie.[18] Robert's commissioned painting of the long-delayed rejuvenation of the park at Versailles, begun in 1774 with the cutting down of the trees for sale as firewood, is a record of the event, resonant with allegorical meaning.[19] Robert was more certainly responsible for the conception of the grotto and cascades of the 'Baths of Apollo,' tucked within a grove of the chateau's park and built to house François Girardon's celebrated sculpture group Apollo Attended by Nymphs.

Gallery

Works on paper

Oil paintings

References, notes and sources

References and notes
  1. ^ Jean de Cayeux. "Robert, Hubert." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 13 Jan. 2017
  2. ^ Robert possessed no fewer than twenty-five of Pannini's canvases. (Jean Cailleux, "Introduction to the Method of Hubert Robert"The Burlington Magazine 109 No. 767 (February 1967), p. i.
  3. ^ Sarah Catala, "La matérialité fonctionnelle, Quelques refléxions sur les pratiques de dessin d'Hubert Robert", in exh. cat. Hubert Robert, un peintre visionnaire, Paris, éditions du musée du Louvre / Somogy, p. 65-72.
  4. ^ Salcedo, Andrea (9 July 2023). "A not-so-brief history of the Colosseum for confused vandals". Washington Post.
  5. ^ Le port de Rome, orné de différens Monumens d'Architecture ancien et moderne.
  6. ^ a b c Colin B. Bailey, "Hubert Robert & the Joy of Ruins", The New York Review of Books 63.15 (October 13, 2016), pp. 35–37.
  7. ^ Dessinateur des Jardins du Roi, Garde des tableaux du Roi, and Garde du Museum et conseiller à l'Academie
  8. ^ 18 brumaire An II
  9. ^ He was released 18 thermidor 1794.
  10. ^ Histoire de Paris, Héron de Villefosse, Editions Grasset (Paris), 1955, pg 181
  11. ^ A colour print of a detail of the design is mounted in Huisman, p88.
  12. ^ Hubert Robert Biography, National Gallery of Art https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1832.html
  13. ^ Victor Carlson, "Hubert Robert in Rome: Some Pen-and-Wash Drawings" Master Drawings 39.3 (Autumn 2001, pp. 288-299) p. 291.
  14. ^ Compare the role of Louis Moreau at Bagatelle.
  15. ^ Adams1979:104
  16. ^ At the Art Institute of Chicago.
  17. ^ At the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  18. ^ Joseph Baillio, "Hubert Robert's Decorations for the Château de Bagatelle" Metropolitan Museum Journal 27 (1992), pp. 149–182.
  19. ^ Paula Rea Radisich, "The King Prunes His Garden: Hubert Robert's Picture of the Versailles Gardens in 1775" Eighteenth-Century Studies 21.4 (Summer 1988), pp. 454–471.
Sources
 
The Arc de Triomphe and the Theatre of Orange, 1787 (Louvre), part of the Principal Monuments of France series
  • Adams, William Howard, The French Garden 1500–1800 (New York: Braziller) 1979.
  • Huisman, Philippe, French Watercolours of the 18th Century (1969) London, Thames and Hudson ISBN 978-0-500-23105-0
  • Wiebenson, Dora, The Picturesque Garden in France (Princeton University Press) 1978.
  •   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Robert, Hubert". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 402.
  • Sarah Catala. Les Hubert Robert de Besançon. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013 [catalogue raisonné of drawings from public library and fine art museum of Besançon].

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hubert Robert.
  • Joconde - Catalogue des Collections des Musées de France www.culture.gouv.fr (Ministère de la culture et de la communication) — List of the work of Robert (315 entries), French.

August 16, 2023
hubert, robert, french, pronunciation, ybɛʁ, ʁɔbɛʁ, 1733, april, 1808, french, painter, school, romanticism, noted, especially, landscape, paintings, capricci, semi, fictitious, picturesque, depictions, ruins, italy, france, Élisabeth, vigée, lebrunborn22, 173. Hubert Robert French pronunciation ybɛʁ ʁɔbɛʁ 22 May 1733 15 April 1808 was a French painter in the school of Romanticism noted especially for his landscape paintings and capricci or semi fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France 1 Hubert RobertHubert Robert by Elisabeth Vigee LebrunBorn22 May 1733Paris FranceDied15 April 1808 1808 04 15 aged 74 Paris France Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early years 1 2 In Rome 1 3 In Paris 2 Style and legacy 2 1 Robert and picturesque gardens 3 Gallery 4 References notes and sources 5 External linksBiography EditEarly years Edit Hubert Robert was born in Paris in 1733 His father Nicolas Robert was in the service of Francois Joseph de Choiseul marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine Young Robert finished his studies with the Jesuits at the College de Navarre in 1751 and entered the atelier of the sculptor Michel Ange Slodtz who taught him design and perspective but encouraged him to turn to painting In 1754 he left for Rome in the train of Etienne Francois de Choiseul son of his father s employer who had been named French ambassador and would become a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Louis XV in 1758 In Rome Edit The Artist s Studio 1760 Stadelsches KunstinstitutHe spent fully eleven years in Rome a remarkable length of time after the young artist s official residence at the French Academy in Rome ran out he supported himself by works he produced for visiting connoisseurs like the abbe de Saint Non who took Robert to Naples in April 1760 to visit the ruins of Pompeii The marquis de Marigny director of the Batiments du Roi kept abreast of his development in correspondence with Natoire director of the French Academy who urged the pensionnaires to sketch out of doors from nature Robert needed no urging drawings from his sketchbooks document his travels Villa d Este Caprarola The contrast between the ruins of ancient Rome and the life of his time excited his keenest interest He worked for a time in the studio of Giovanni Paolo Panini whose influence can be seen in the Vue imaginaire de la galerie du Louvre en ruine illustration Robert spent his time in the company of young artists in the circle of Piranesi whose capricci of romantically overgrown ruins influenced him so greatly that he gained the nickname Robert des ruines 2 The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career 3 He is reported to have carved his name into the walls of the Colosseum in 1767 4 In Paris Edit The Artist in His Cell 1793 ink wash watercolor and chalk 22 7 x 32 7 cm Musee CarnavaletHis success on his return to Paris in 1765 was rapid the following year he was received by the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture with a Roman capriccio The Port of Rome ornamented with different Monuments of Architecture Ancient and Modern 5 Robert s first exhibition at the Salon of 1767 consisting of thirteen paintings and a number of drawings prompted Denis Diderot to write The ideas which the ruins awake in me are grand Robert subsequently showed work at every Salon until 1802 6 He was successively appointed Designer of the King s Gardens Keeper of the King s Pictures and Keeper of the Museum and Councilor to the Academy 7 Robert was arrested in October 1793 during the French Revolution 8 During the ten months of his detention at Sainte Pelagie and Saint Lazare he made many drawings painted at least 53 canvases and painted numerous vignettes of prison life on plates 6 He was freed one week after the fall of Robespierre 9 Robert narrowly escaped the guillotine when through error another prisoner with a similar name was guillotined in his place 10 Subsequently he was placed on the committee of five in charge of the new national museum at the Palais du Louvre The Revolution also resulted in the destruction of some of Robert s work his painting Peche Cardinal ca 1799 is one that is thought to be lost or destroyed in a fire citation needed Robert had designed the decorations for a little theatre in the new wing at the location of the current staircase Gabriel in the Palace of Versailles Designed to seat about 500 this theatre was built from the summer of 1785 and opened in early 1786 It was intended to serve as an ordinary court theatre replacing the Theatre of the Princes Court which was too old and too small but was destroyed during the time of Louis Philippe A watercolour of Robert s design is in the National Archives in Paris 11 Robert died of a stroke on 15 April 1808 Style and legacy Edit A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman TempleThe quantity of his work is immense comprising perhaps one thousand paintings and ten thousand drawings 6 The Louvre alone contains nine paintings by his hand and specimens are frequently to be met with in provincial museums and private collections Robert s work has more or less of that scenic character which justified his selection by Voltaire to paint the decorations of his theatre at Ferney His work was much engraved by the abbe de Saint Non with whom he had visited Naples in the company of Fragonard during his early days in Italy his work has also been frequently reproduced by Chatelain Linard Le Veau and others He is noted for the liveliness and point with which he treated the subjects he painted Equally at ease painting small easel pictures or huge decorations he worked quickly using an alla prima technique 12 Along with this incessant activity as an artist his daring character and many adventures attracted general admiration and sympathy In the fourth canto of his L Imagination Jacques Delille celebrated Robert s miraculous escape when lost in the catacombs Robert and picturesque gardens Edit Cypresses 1773 300 x 75 cm Hermitage Triumphal Column 1773 300 x 74 cm HermitageEnterprising and prolific Robert also acted in a role similar to that of a modern day art director conceptualizing fashionably dilapidated gardens for several aristocratic clients summarized by his possible intervention at Ermenonville there he would have been working with the architect Jean Marie Morel for the marquis de Girardin who was the author of Compositions des paysages 1777 and had distinct views of his own In 1786 he began his better documented 13 collaboration at Mereville with his most significant patron the financier Jean Joseph de Laborde who found Francois Joseph Belanger s plans too expensive and perhaps too formal Though documents are again lacking Hubert Robert s name is invariably invoked in connection with Marie Antoinette s premier architecte Richard Mique through several phases of the creation of an informal landscape garden at the Petit Trianon and the setting of the petit hameau Robert s contribution to garden design was not in making practical ground plans for improvements but in providing atmospheric inspiration for the proposed effect 14 At Ermenonville and at Mereville Hubert Robert s paintings both recorded and inspired according to W H Adams 15 Robert s four large ruin fantasies painted in 1787 for Mereville 16 may be searched in vain for direct connections with the garden Hubert s paintings of the Moulin Joly of his friend Claude Henri Watelet render the fully grown atmosphere of a garden that had been under way since 1754 His set of six Italianate landscape panels painted for Bagatelle 17 were not the inspiration for the formal turfed parterre set in the thinned woodlands designed by Belanger the later picturesque extensions of Bagatelle were carried out by its Scottish gardener William Blaikie 18 Robert s commissioned painting of the long delayed rejuvenation of the park at Versailles begun in 1774 with the cutting down of the trees for sale as firewood is a record of the event resonant with allegorical meaning 19 Robert was more certainly responsible for the conception of the grotto and cascades of the Baths of Apollo tucked within a grove of the chateau s park and built to house Francois Girardon s celebrated sculpture group Apollo Attended by Nymphs Gallery EditWorks on paper Capriccio ca 1756 watercolor 56 4 x 41 3 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Oval Fountain in the Villa d Este Gardens Tivoli 1760 32 7 x 45 cm National Gallery of Art The Large Staircase ca 1761 65 45 x 32 3 cm Pen and ink wash watercolor and chalk Museum of Fine Arts Houston Young Artists in the Studio ca 1763 65 re chalk 35 2 x 41 2 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Arch of Titus in Rome 1760s watercolor 35 x 49 5 cm Czartoryski Museum Artist Sketching a Young Girl ca 1773 red chalk 25 5 x 33 8 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Women in Landscape ca 1773 ink wash amp chalk 36 6 x 28 7 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Boat Journey 1774 sanguine 28 9 x 36 5 cm National Museum in Warsaw Draughtsman of the Borghese Vase ca 1775 chalk 36 5 x 29 cm Museu de Belles Arts de Valencia Figures in a Colonnade ca 1780 ink wash amp chalk 58 6 x 44 7 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Self Portrait in Prison ca 1793 94 ink wash watercolor and chalk 17 6 x 23 8 cm Galerie CoatalemOil paintings The Old Bridge 1760 76 2 x 100 3 cm Yale University Art Gallery Italian Kitchen ca 1760 67 60 x 75 cm National Museum in Warsaw Orator in Prison 1760s 48 x 38 cm Nationalmuseum The Pantheon with the Port of Ripetta 1766 119 x 145 cm Beaux Arts de Paris The Fire of Rome ca 1771 75 5 x 93 cm Musee d art moderne Andre Malraux Ecole de Chirurgie Under Construction 1773 76 x 91 5 cm Musee Carnavalet The Finding of the Laocoon 1773 119 3 x 162 5 cm Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Tivoli Waterfalls 1776 50 x 74 cm Petit Palais Studio of an Antiquities Restorer in Rome 1783 101 x 143 cm Toledo Museum of Art Flight of Galatea mid 1780s 50 x 42 cm Hermitage Museum Shipwreck 1780s 322 x 199 cm Worcester Art Museum The Fire of the Paris Opera 1781 123 5 171 cm private collection The Landing Place 1787 88 255 x 223 cm Art Institute of Chicago The Fountains 1787 88 255 x 221 cm Art Institute of Chicago The Old Temple 1787 88 255 x 223 cm Art Institute of Chicago The Obelisk 1787 88 255 x 223 cm Art Institute of Chicago The Bastille in the Early Days of Its Demolition 1789 96 x 135 cm Musee Carnavalet Neglected Statue 1790s 40 x 31 cm Hermitage Museum Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk 1798 120 x 99 cm Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Project for the Transformation of the Grande Galerie du Louvre 1796 115 x 145 cm Louvre Imaginary View of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre in Ruins 1796 114 5 x 146 cm Louvre Roman Capriccio 1798 94 x 117 cm Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Architectural Fantasy ca 1802 08 114 x 147 8 cm Rhode Island School of Design MuseumReferences notes and sources EditReferences and notes Jean de Cayeux Robert Hubert Grove Art Online Oxford Art Online Oxford University Press Web 13 Jan 2017 Robert possessed no fewer than twenty five of Pannini s canvases Jean Cailleux Introduction to the Method of Hubert Robert The Burlington Magazine 109 No 767 February 1967 p i Sarah Catala La materialite fonctionnelle Quelques reflexions sur les pratiques de dessin d Hubert Robert in exh cat Hubert Robert un peintre visionnaire Paris editions du musee du Louvre Somogy p 65 72 Salcedo Andrea 9 July 2023 A not so brief history of the Colosseum for confused vandals Washington Post Le port de Rome orne de differens Monumens d Architecture ancien et moderne a b c Colin B Bailey Hubert Robert amp the Joy of Ruins The New York Review of Books 63 15 October 13 2016 pp 35 37 Dessinateur des Jardins du Roi Garde des tableaux du Roi and Garde du Museum et conseiller a l Academie 18 brumaire An II He was released 18 thermidor 1794 Histoire de Paris Heron de Villefosse Editions Grasset Paris 1955 pg 181 A colour print of a detail of the design is mounted in Huisman p88 Hubert Robert Biography National Gallery of Art https www nga gov collection artist info 1832 html Victor Carlson Hubert Robert in Rome Some Pen and Wash Drawings Master Drawings 39 3 Autumn 2001 pp 288 299 p 291 Compare the role of Louis Moreau at Bagatelle Adams1979 104 At the Art Institute of Chicago At the Metropolitan Museum of Art Joseph Baillio Hubert Robert s Decorations for the Chateau de Bagatelle Metropolitan Museum Journal 27 1992 pp 149 182 Paula Rea Radisich The King Prunes His Garden Hubert Robert s Picture of the Versailles Gardens in 1775 Eighteenth Century Studies 21 4 Summer 1988 pp 454 471 Sources The Arc de Triomphe and the Theatre of Orange 1787 Louvre part of the Principal Monuments of France seriesAdams William Howard The French Garden 1500 1800 New York Braziller 1979 Huisman Philippe French Watercolours of the 18th Century 1969 London Thames and Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 23105 0 Wiebenson Dora The Picturesque Garden in France Princeton University Press 1978 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Robert Hubert Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 23 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 402 Sarah Catala Les Hubert Robert de Besancon Milan Silvana Editoriale 2013 catalogue raisonne of drawings from public library and fine art museum of Besancon External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hubert Robert Joconde Catalogue des Collections des Musees de France www culture gouv fr Ministere de la culture et de la communication List of the work of Robert 315 entries French Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Hubert Robert amp oldid 1168894927, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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