The present album is significant for the importance it had within the artist's studio. The catalogue of the sale of Robert's collection recorded that the artist carefully preserved his drawings and classified them in the most meticulous way. Besides the fifty albums of sketches he during what he called his promenades, (lot 353), there were other albums containing drawings by Old Masters such as lot 340 or by fellow artists such as lot 345; 'suite de 94 dessins, croquis et contre-épreuves... par Robert, Bouchardon, Lucatelli [sic] et autres, casiers [pigeon-holes] 59-95'. More importantly five albums grandly described as volumes, were the object of a specific mention in the catalogue: 'lot 341: cinq volumes brochés contenant plus de 200 contre-épreuves d'études de Hubert Robert dont la grande partie a passé chez l'étranger', G. Gabillot, Hubert Robert, Paris, 1895, p. 269. There is little doubt that the present album may have been one of them.
Although the present album may have been part of the sale, its importance is evident in that it had been singled out by the artist to be bound in green calfskin with a gilt impression of his initial R. Its sheets were evidently essential to the artist. A brilliant analysis of its content by J. de Cayeux in 1959 op. cit., proves that Robert's attention came more from a wish to pay tribute to François Boucher and to the artists who had shaped his career, than a desire to keep a record of far gone drawings.
The album in its original form contained fifty three pages with fifty four drawings, all counterproofs, twenty eight of which are by Robert himself. Eighteen now remain in the album, all directly inspired by Boucher. The first counterproof in the album, evidently after a drawing by Boucher, serves as a dedication to the album. The original drawing was engraved by Demarteau, P. Jean-Richard, L'oeuvre gravé de François Boucher dans la collection Edouard Rothschild, Paris, 1978, no. 598, illustrated. Another counterproof (no. 21) is so close to an original by Boucher, engraved by Demarteau (P. Jean-Richard, op. cit., no. 629) that, were it not for the difference in background and for Robert's very recognizable handling of the chalk, one would think it was a counterproof of a Boucher original. As Jean de Cayeux pointed out, two counterproofs in the album are of figures appearing in a now lost picture of Vue de l'Escalier du Parc de la Villa Massimo à Rome, (nos. 12 and 26). There was a theory dating from the 18th Century proposing that the figures had been painted by Boucher himself. Although it is tempting to consider these counterproofs of an original Boucher drawing, the group of washerwomen is derived from a preliminary drawing by Robert formerly in the Michel-Levy collection which he inscribed 'd'après nature, Charenton' a fact which precludes the idea that Robert would have copied a drawing by Boucher.
These counterproofs are therefore the testimony of Robert's wish to produce pastiches of the work of Boucher. The second counterproof (no.26), related to the lost picture by Robert, is particularly interesting: the standing man, leaning on the donkey, appears on the left of the composition while the woman descending the imaginary stairs is visible on the right. In the counterproof, however, the two figures appear next to each other, yet a slight change of scale between the two figures is and a small difference of intensity in the chalk suggest that the counterproof was made from two separate drawings placed next to each other by Robert in a wish to make the counterproof a composition in itself. So far only one of the original drawings by Robert has been traced, (no. 14), sold in Paris, Drouot, 6 June 1966, lot 5 (as Boucher). The composition is indeed very close to those of Boucher's late production like the Retour du Marché.
Robert came back from Italy in 1764. By then Boucher's health was already poor and his activity was greatly limited. Robert, on the other hand, was already an accomplished artist who had lived in Rome for eleven years as the disciple of Panini. Robert's interest in Boucher was to be limited to the study of figures which he could use as staffage in his pictures, one of the weakest points of most of his compositions. It is therefore not very surprising that on his return to Paris in 1764, two years before he entered the Academy and took the oath from Boucher himself, Robert had tried to adopt a style of figure drawing which had become not only a hallmark of Boucher's art in print-making, but an international model in painting and porcelain. The way Robert preserved, in a beautifully bound album, the marks of his inspiration, is a true reflection of his well known generous and grateful nature.
In the same thoughtful way, Robert to preserved the counterproofs of drawings by Ango, an artist whose personality was quite unknown until Marianne Roland-Michel rediscovered his identity. Ango was a friend of Robert and Fragonard. He limited his activity to copying either the master - as is the case with some of the counterproofs in the present album - or his contemporaries. Two of the original drawings for the counterproofs, nos. 2 and 5, reappeared at the Galerie Cailleux.
Counterproof no. 6 is after a drawing in Valence, which copies a picture by Salvator Rosa now in the National Gallery in London but formerly in the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. J. de Cayeux, Les Hubert Robert au musée de Valence, Valence, 1985, no. 93, illustrated. Again, Robert in the album admits some form of debt to Ango by placing, just after the series of his friend's counterproofs, one of a drawing depicting a fountain in ruins with two herms, no. 8, by his hand but again very close to the style of Ango.