- 66
Nicolas Robert Orléans or Langres 1614 - 1685 Paris
Description
- Nicolas Robert
- a quagga
- watercolor and gouache on vellum, within gold framing lines
Catalogue Note
Nicolas Robert was the greatest Natural History artist of 17th century France. His vélins, loose and in albums, survive in collections outside France (for example, the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Hofbibliothek, Vienna), but the vast majority are preserved in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, where they form the nucleus of the collection of more than six thousand sheets known as the Vélins du Muséum (formerly the Vélins du Roi).
Robert's first major commission was provided by Baron Sainte-Maure in 1641, to create the celebrated Guirlande de Julie, a book of watercolors on vellum of flowers inscribed with madrigals, which was to be a gift to the Baron's betrothed, Julie d' Agennes. Thereafter, the artist entered the service of Gaston d'Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII. A passionate botanist, Gaston employed several artists to make watercolors of the rare plants that he had assembled in his garden at Blois. Daniel Rabel seems, at first, to have been the principal artist, but Robert's superior talent was quickly recognized. By the time of Gaston's death in 1660, Robert was responsible for the contents of five large folio albums of vélins. These were added to by the King's minister, Colbert, who appointed Robert Peintre ordinaire du Roi pour la miniature in 1666, with a contract requiring the artist to paint a minimum of 54 vélins every year. Undoubtedly, Robert must have employed studio assistants to execute, at least in part, some of the seven hundred vélins produced, but the present sheet is of such exceptional quality that it is clearly a work of the master.
Although many gouaches of plants or birds have survived, far fewer representations of animals are known. The Quagga is particularly notable, as the animals, a sub-species of the Plains Zebra native to South Africa, became extinct in 1883. A Quagga stallion, perhaps the descendant of the present animal, was part of the Royal Menagerie of Louis XVI, and was depicted by Nicolas Marechal in a watercolor of 1793.