HUBERT ROBERT Paris, 1733 - 1808
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HUBERT ROBERT Paris, 1733 - 1808 In the ruins of Caracalla’s Baths, 1762 Red chalk 420 x 330 mm Annotated bottom right: 1762 / Caracalla PROVENANCE Jean Masson (Lugt 1494a) Sale of his collection, Paris, 6 December 1923, n°141 Son of Marquis de Stainville’s valet, Hubert Robert apprenticed in the workshop of the sculptor Michelangelo Slodtz. In 1754, thanks to the support of Stainville (future Duke of Choiseul), he obtained a place at the Académie de France in Rome. This stay in Italy - which lasted eleven years -, his stay in Tivoli and Naples in 1760 with Jean-Honoré Fragonard and the abbot of Saint-Non, his meeting with Piranesi and his discovery of the art of Panini deeply permeated Robert’s art, characterized by a balance established between his fascination for architecture and his taste for the representation of everyday life. In July 1765, Hubert Robert returned to Paris, where he quickly became successful. An academician since 1766, he exhibited regularly at the Salon and was to lead a brilliant career for twenty years, close to the Court. He developed sketches made in Italy in large compositions, executed numerous views of Paris and famous parks and, in 1783, began the series of monuments in the South of France, now kept in the Louvre. The artist did not escape the troubles of the Revolution. Arrested as a suspect in 1792, he was saved by the 9 Thermidor and returned to official duty in 1795, sitting alongside Fragonard on the Commission of the Museum Central des Arts, the future Louvre Museum. The years 1762-1763 are exceptional in Hubert Robert’s work. At the end of the spring of 1762, the artist fell seriously ill, while the autumn saw the end of his studies at the Académie de France, which did not prevent him from continuing his stay in Rome, where he was welcomed by the Bailiff of Breteuil until his departure for Paris. We know of a fairly large corpus of large-format red chalk dated 1762-1763, most of which are views executed on the Capitoline Hill or, just nearby, in the forum. This set was later used by Robert as a source of motifs for his paintings and drawings after his return to France. Our sheet, dated 1762, fits perfectly into this set. At that time, Robert, having acquired great dexterity during his stay at the French Academy in Rome, executed his red chalk on the motif with great speed. Here, he placed himself in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths, a place that he curiously rarely represented. He probably placed himself in the central hall and realized a view close to the one represented by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in his plate of the Views of Rome, The Baths of Caracalla: inside the central hall (Hind 77, fig. 1). The artist shows himself nervous and precise in the tracing of the lines of the architecture. He plays with the grain of the paper to create the shaded parts of the foreground that oppose the parts left in reserve, in order to suggest the projection of southern light onto the façades of the ruins. Robert then draws the silhouettes of the two shepherds in the foreground, whose small size increases the scale of the place. The frankness of the frontal angle of view combined with the nervous writing of the leaf is quite characteristic of the production of the red chalk executed around 1762-1763. 1. .