Capricci of Roman ruins with figures conversing and resting

These capricci are youthful works that were painted in the earliest years of Robert's career, and they can be dated to the middle 1750s, shortly after the artist's arrival in Rome. They are influenced by Gian Paolo Panini, the eminent Italian master of ruins paintings, who taught drawing and perspective at the French Academy in Rome during the years that Robert was resident there.
Similar canvases are in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome (see Luigi Salerno, I pittori di vedute in Italia, 1580-1830, 1991, p. 170), formerly in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and in the Kress collection, New York. A number of Robert's earliest vedute and capricci have been rediscovered in recent decades, but this period of his work was first reconstructed and studied in the 1920s, by Pierre de Nohlac ('Les prèmieres oeuvres romaines d'Hubert Robert', Renaissance de l'Art Franais et des Industries de Luxe, January 1923, pp. 27-33) and Hermann Voss ('Opere giovanili di Hubert Robert in gallerie italiane', Dedalo, VII, 1928, pp. 743-51).

These paintings will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Hubert Robert being prepared with the assistance of the Wildenstein Institute. We are grateful to Joseph Baillio for his assistance in preparing this entry.