Hubert Robert

Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, De Watteau à Cézanne, 7 July - 30 September 1951, no. 59.

The painting is slightly less yellow in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has been relined. The paint surface is in good overall condition, with the colours and details of the work well-preserved, though the painting is a little dirty and under an old, yellowed varnish. There are two old knocks to the painting in the roof of the temple, which have split the upper canvas and measure approximately 5cm. and 7cm. Some further old restored knocks are visible due to the discolouration of their retouchings and the uneveness of the painting's surface; one approximately 3 cm by 2cm. in size above the temple's stone plaque, another circular knock approximately 1 by 1cm. large to the right of the temple's door and a third 3 by 2 cm. to the column far left. Retouchings to these old damages do fluoresce under UV light, which also indicates further old scattered retouchings to the sky. There do appear to be further areas of retouching to the painting, but these are hard to distinguish due to the aforementioned reflective varnish, which hinders proper inspection of the painting under UV light. Offered in an ornate gilt wood and plaster frame in good condition though a little rubbed and with a few minor knocks.
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The ruined temple with its Corinthian capitals is almost certainly inspired by the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, outside Rome, which Robert visited in the summer of 1760 with Fragonard and the Abbé de Saint-Non. He made numerous drawings of the site, a good example of which is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valence,¹ and they formed the basis for numerous paintings after his return to Paris in 1765, perhaps most spectacularly for the enormous canvas of 1779 now in the Château de Maisons-Lafitte.²

1. Exhibited in Washington, National Gallery of Art, Hubert Robert. Paintings and watercolours, 1978, no. 18.
2. Exhibited in Rome, Villa Medici, J.H. Fragonard e H. Robert a Roma, 1990-91, no. 150.