Hubert Robert

Louis-François Trouard (1729-1794);

His anonymous sale, Paris, Paillet, 22 February 1779, lot 71;

Where acquired by Jean-Baptiste Guillaume de Gévigney (1729-1802);

With G. Wildenstein, Paris, 1928;

With Birtschansky, Munich, 1930;

Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, by 1930;

Thence by inheritance to his daughter, Baroness Gabrielle Bentinck-Thyssen;

Thence by descent to Baron Adolph Bentinck and Baroness Gabrielle Bentinck-Thyssen;

Their collection sale ("Old Master Paintings and Works of Art from the Bentinck-Thyssen Collection") London, Sotheby's, 6 December 1995, lot 77;

Where purchased by the present collector.

Munich, Neue Pinakothek, Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz, 1930, no. 275, reproduced plate 128a;

Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Choix de la Collection Bentinck, 1970, no. 48;

Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum, Die Sammlung Bentinck-Thyssen, 23 October 1970 - 3 January 1971, no. 42;

Bielefeld, Kunsthalle, Landschaften aus vier Jahrhunderten aus dem Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1973, no. 27;

Lausanne, Fondation de l’Hermitage; Paris, Musée Marmottan; Tokyo, Kumamoto-Toyama-Miyagi; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Luxemburg, Musée de l’Etat, La Collection Bentinck-Thyssen, de Breughel à Guardi, 1986 - 1987, no. 51;

Rome, Villa Medici, J.H. Fragonard e H. Robert a Roma, 6 December 1990 - 24 February 1991, no. 127.

P. de Nolhac, Hubert Robert, 1733-1808, Paris 1910, p. 103;

Pantheon, January 1917;

R. Heinemann, Collection Schloss Rohoncz, Zurich 1937, vol. I, p. 129, cat. no. 352, vol. II, reproduced pl. 273.

This painting, with its poetic atmosphere and fluid brushwork, epitomizes the best of Robert’s oeuvre. It dates from towards the end of the artist’s lengthy sojourn in Italy, between 1754-1765, a period which was instrumental in shaping both his style and his reputation. At the age of twenty-two, Robert arrived in Rome under the patronage of the Comte de Stainville, the future Duc de Choiseul.  He studied at the French Academy in Rome which, at that time, was located at the Palazzo Mancini. During his eleven years in Rome, he travelled extensively and compiled a portfolio of drawings and paintings of the city and its environs that inspired his later work.  In 1760, he visited Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum on a drawing expedition with his close friend the Abbé de Saint-Non. During these early years, Robert developed what would be a life-long fascination with architecture and his many depictions of ruins earned him the sobriquet “Robert des Ruines.” By the time Robert returned to Paris, he was already successful and well known. He was accepted as a member of the Academy in 1766 and, in 1778, was appointed designer of the King’s gardens and given lodgings in the Louvre.

A preparatory drawing, in pen and brown ink and wash, is in the collection of the Musée du Louvre (fig. 1). The low view point of the composition suggests that this painting may have been intended as an overdoor.  The motif of the staircase was clearly a favorite of Robert’s and appears in many other works. Perhaps closest in spirit to the present painting are a drawing of Figures on a Staircase Leading to a Villa from an album of Italian drawings (sold Monaco, Sotheby’s, 1 December 1989, lot 17) and a painting depicting a Staircase with an Obelisk, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (inv. SR65).

Note on the provenance

This painting was at one time in the collection of the noted architect Louis-François Trouard (1729-1794) who was elected to the Academy of Architecture in 1767 and promoted to Contrôleur of external works at Versailles in 1769. It was purchased in 1779 by Jean-Baptiste Guillaume de Gévigney, conservator of documents and genealogies at the Royal Library.¹  Though never convicted, Gévigney was thought to have stolen many documents from the library and was dismissed from his post in 1784. He lived out his life in Dijon, apparently continuing with theft and forgery, where he died in 1802.²

For much of the twentieth century, the painting was part of the celebrated collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family. By 1930 it had been acquired by Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza who began forming an art collection in the 1920s. Heinrich had inherited enormous wealth from his father, August Thyssen (1842-1926) who had founded an iron and steel works in 1871 near Mühlheim in the Ruhr. In 1906, Heinrich married the daughter of Baron Bornemisza who had been Chamberlain to the King of Hungary. He bought the Bornemisza castle at Rohoncz, after which the art collection was later named. In 1932, Heinrich moved to Switzerland where he purchased the Villa Favorita near Lugano, assembling and displaying his collection of pictures there. When the Baron died in 1947, his collection was divided between his sons and daughters. The present painting was inherited by his daughter Gabrielle, who married Baron Adolph Bentinck van Schoonheten, a Dutch diplomat. Following the Baron’s death in 1970, the Baroness exhibited many of the works in her collection in Paris, Düsseldorf, and, from 1986-87, in an international traveling exhibition. The paintings were on long term loan to the Musée de l’Etat, Luxemburg before being auctioned in a single owner sale at Sotheby’s London in 1995.

1. According to the Getty Provenance Index Database.

2. See E.A.R. Brown, “The Disappearance of the Oxford Collection of Gaignières Drawings from the French Royal Library,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 78, Part 5, Appendix III, 1988, pp. 61-71.