Hubert Robert

With Galerie Cailleux, Paris (bears their mark, not in Lugt), Les étapes de la création, 1989, no. 42

Paris, Salon de 1767, no. 110;
Leningrad, Hermitage, Hubert Robert et le paysage architectural dans la seconde moitié du XVIII^e siècle, 1983, no. 7;
Karlsruhe, Prinz Max Paleis, Von Gluck des Lebens. Französische Kunst des 18 jahrhunderts aus der Staatlichen Eremitage St-Petersburg, 1996, no. 26;
Valence, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Hubert Robert (1733-1808) et Saint-Pétersbourg, les commandes de la famille Impériale et des princes russes entre 1773 et 1802, 1999, no. 49

Jean de Cayeux, Hubert Robert, Paris 1989, p. 333

Laid down. In excellent condition. Red chalk remains vibrant and strong. Slight yellowing at the left margin and a very small hole near the upper margin in the gap between the branches of the tree. Sold in a gilded frame.
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This large and fresh drawing is characteristic of Robert's style and his use of rich red chalk to create an animated scene.  The lines inscribed on the stone are attributed to Virgil and can be translated as: 'And so, birds, you don't make nests for yourselves.'  A companion drawing, The Flight of Galatea, is similarly inscribed on a stone with lines from Virgil's Eclogues, Book III, verses 64-65.¹ 

A pair of paintings of these subjects, but with somewhat different compositions, is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (see fig. 1).²  The paintings and the drawings can both be dated on stylistic grounds to the 1780s.

Robert, who was inspired by classical architecture and sculpture in his drawings and paintings, here makes use of Virgil's classical pastoral poetry to create very 18th-century pastoral compositions.

1.  J. de Cayeux, Les Hubert Robert de la Collection Veyrene au Musée de Valence, Valence 1985, p. 298, no. 85
2.  I.S. Nemilova, French Painting, Eighteenth Century, The Hermitage, Moscow and Florence 1986, p. 276, no. 201; p. 278, no. 202