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Lot Essay
Hubert Robert received a classical education from the Jesuits at the prestigious College de Navarre (1745-1751), the most important college after the Sorbonne. That he became an able Latinist and knowledgeable about history and literature is reflected in the attention that he paid to ancient inscriptions and archeological details in his art. His training with the sculptor Michel-Ange Slotz introduced a life-long interest in sculpture, which would always occupy a prominent place in his painted compositions. In 1754, he went to Italy in the entourage of his father's employer, the Comte de Stainville (later Duc de Choiseul), newly appointed French ambassador to Rome.
During his eleven years in Rome, where he studied side-by-side with the pensionnaires at the French Academy, Robert met important collectors and artists, including Piranesi and Gian Paolo Panini, who was the Academy's teacher of perspective. Panini would prove the greatest influence on Robert's early style, as Charles Natoire (then director of the Academy) recognized. Robert carefully studied and consciously emulated Panini's works at this time. He is recorded as having copied a drawing by Panini for Choiseul, is known to have once made a pendant for a picture by Panini, and collected over the course of his life twenty-five oil paintings by the older master. So great was Panini's impact on the young artist that Robert has sometimes gone unrecognized as the author of his own earliest independent paintings. These, including the present pair, were made in Rome in the mid-to-late 1750s, are rarely signed (his first dated work is from 1757), and are so indebted to Panini in subject matter, palette and paint handling, that this earliest body of work has only recently been fully defined and documented. (Two earlier efforts to identify the beginnings of Robert's career were made in the 1920s: Pierre de Nolhac, 'Les premiere oeuvres romaines d'Hubert Robert', Renaissance de l'Art Francais et des Industries de Luxe, January 1923, pp. 27-33; Hermann Voss, 'Opere giovanelli di Hubert Robert in gallerie italiane', Dedalo, vol. VIII, 1928, pp. 743-51.) Two other vedute similar to the present pair are in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome, and another was formerly in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
The present lot will be included in the catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings of Hubert Robert being prepared by Guy Wildenstein, Joseph Baillio and the Wildenstein Institute. We are grateful to Joseph Baillio for his assistance in preparing this entry.
During his eleven years in Rome, where he studied side-by-side with the pensionnaires at the French Academy, Robert met important collectors and artists, including Piranesi and Gian Paolo Panini, who was the Academy's teacher of perspective. Panini would prove the greatest influence on Robert's early style, as Charles Natoire (then director of the Academy) recognized. Robert carefully studied and consciously emulated Panini's works at this time. He is recorded as having copied a drawing by Panini for Choiseul, is known to have once made a pendant for a picture by Panini, and collected over the course of his life twenty-five oil paintings by the older master. So great was Panini's impact on the young artist that Robert has sometimes gone unrecognized as the author of his own earliest independent paintings. These, including the present pair, were made in Rome in the mid-to-late 1750s, are rarely signed (his first dated work is from 1757), and are so indebted to Panini in subject matter, palette and paint handling, that this earliest body of work has only recently been fully defined and documented. (Two earlier efforts to identify the beginnings of Robert's career were made in the 1920s: Pierre de Nolhac, 'Les premiere oeuvres romaines d'Hubert Robert', Renaissance de l'Art Francais et des Industries de Luxe, January 1923, pp. 27-33; Hermann Voss, 'Opere giovanelli di Hubert Robert in gallerie italiane', Dedalo, vol. VIII, 1928, pp. 743-51.) Two other vedute similar to the present pair are in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome, and another was formerly in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
The present lot will be included in the catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings of Hubert Robert being prepared by Guy Wildenstein, Joseph Baillio and the Wildenstein Institute. We are grateful to Joseph Baillio for his assistance in preparing this entry.