Maison près du lac

The inscription on the lower edge of the painting 'St. L.' refers to the prison at Saint-Lazare, where Robert was incarcerated from February until July 1794. Thus, he probably completed this painting, and perhaps its pendant, Washerwomen at a Lock, private collection, while in prison. Even imprisonment did not interrupt Robert's productivity, and it is said that he created as many as fifty-three pictures, some quite large, by the time he was freed a few days after Robespierre's downfall and execution in the summer of 1794. He would paint from six in the morning until noon, and after that, he organized the ball games that were mentioned by fellow inmate and future operatic hero André Chénier (1762-1794) in his famous last poem La jeune captive. A companion of Robert at Saint-Lazare commented that the artist never lost his natural gaiety and tranquility throughout his ordeal.

Certainly, a work such as the present painting, does not suggest a discernable change in Robert's temperament. This bucolic scene well reflects the artist's typically enchanted vision of nature. It is instructive to note that after his return to France in 1765, after many years if study in Italy, Robert often portrayed his native countryside with the same dazzling pictorial effects that he bestowed of his paintings of ruins and the Italian landscape.

The present composition is to be included in the forthcoming catalogue of Robert's oeuvre being prepared by Joseph Baillio of the Wildenstein Institute.