Hubert Robert

With Wildenstein, Paris;
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owners in 1958.

Venice, XXI Esposizioni Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, 1938, no. 323.

The following condition report is provided by Rebecca Gregg who is an external restorer and not an employee of Sotheby's. The canvas appears in relatively good condition. There are no distinct planar deformations and the overall tension appears good. The stretcher appears relatively sound; the horizontal member is slightly bowed. All the keys are present The paint layers appear in relatively good condition, there are no significant damages or loss. There are two raised horizontal lines running the width of the painting, 6cm and 9cm from the lower edge and 3.7cm and 4.7cm from the upper edge. While the paint appears raised along these lines the adhesion between the paint and ground layers and the support appears good. These do not appear to correspond to stretcher bar marks as the placement appears to differ from the current stretcher. There are minor areas of over-paint located in the upper quadrant, along the stretcher bar marks at the right edge and in the lower right quadrant. And some areas of glazing along the architectural detail at the left edge, however none of this over-paint remaining from a previous restoration campaign appears significant. There are small minor retouchings present in the area of the sky and foliage in the lighter areas of the composition. There is a thick discoloured varnish layer present that fluoresces strongly in ultra violet examination. This layer has been partially removed in the area of the sky and a fresh slightly patchy varnish layer applied on top. The painting was examined in the frame.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Robert's fascination with the ruins of Roman antiquity stemmed from his eleven year sojourn in Rome between 1754 and 1765. The painter Charles-Joseph Natoire remarked on his arrival that he had 'a taste for architecture', and indeed Robert's exposure to the mounuments of antiquity were to provide a lifelong artistic inspiration, earning him the sobriquet 'Robert des ruines'.

In scenes such as this Robert reveals his debt to the engravings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi as well as the architectural capricci of the Italian painter Gian Paolo Panini, who was professor of perspective at the Académie de France in Rome, who he would have met through their mutual patron, the Duc de Choiseul, and copies of whose Views of Ancient and Modern Rome he owned. The huge romanticised colonnades of Corinthian columns, sometimes shown with a barreled vault or left open to the sky as here, recur frequently in Robert's works on this theme and were inspired by the monuments of ancient Rome. These colonnades were frequently graced with famous examples of classical statuary; in this instance the soldiers gamble beneath the statue of the Apollo Belvedere  then as now in the Vatican and one of the classical works most admired by the Enlightenment, while beyond can be seen a headless copy of the the equally famous Aphrodite of Cnidus, of which several copies or variants were in Rome. The composition strongly recalls one of Robert's most famous designs, the Imaginary view of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre in ruins, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1796 and today in the Louvre, in which an artist sits sketching beneath the Apollo Belvedere while other figures walk among and ponder on other fragments of classical and Renaissance statuary¹. Whether such views simply echoed what Diderot called the 'poétique des ruines' or if Robert intended a deeper meaning is not known. The soldiers and passers by, the frequent inhabitants of Robert's canvases are here undoubtedly derived from the works of Salvator Rosa.

 

1. Inv. R.F. 1975-11. Exhibited Valence, Musée de Valence,  Hubert Robert et Saint-Pétersbourg, 1999, no. 13.