Hubert Robert

Vicomte de la Rochebouette;
Edmond Noel;
His sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 27 May 1924, lot 21 for 40,000 FF;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1991, lot 66, where acquired by the present collector.

E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Paris 1999, vol. 11, p. 762.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a fairly old stretcher and lining, which has slightly imprinted the canvas into the paint. This may simply be accentuated by the rather dusty old varnish, where a few vertical streaks may perhaps have been cleaned by moisture, with one or two lines rubbed in the upper left corner of the sky. There is a little old discoloured retouching in the lower sky and some small retouchings at the top edge. The light films of paint, almost washes, are quite transparent showing the drawing in the sky above the columns and the various pentimenti such as the altered crest of the dome behind the columns, and the added bushes behind the shepherdess as well as the change in the outline behind Castor and Pollux, which has been touched out. The greyish old varnish is unflattering at present and belies the fine undamaged condition of the painting, characteristic of the artist’s ease and lightness of touch. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The warm light which bathes this pastoral scene with ancient ruins illustrates Hubert Robert's twin fascination with the mood of a landscape, characteristically portrayed in a soft palette, and the continuing presence of antiquity. His interest in Roman ruins was inspired by a trip to Italy in 1754 made at the age of twenty-two in the entourage of the Comte de Stainville. That trip became an eleven-year stay in which Robert closely observed the wonders of Italy both past and present, faithfully recording his surroundings in his sketchbooks. He returned to his drawings for inspiration well after his return to France, earning him the sobriquet "Robert des ruines".

Like many of his works, the present design is a capriccio, a composite of the statue of Castor and Pollux which Robert would have sketched in Rome, and the remains of a Roman temple. Three very similar columns below a broken cornice recur in another landscape sold in these Rooms, 3 July 1996, lot 275. In the middle distance we find a large temple which is unquestionably based on the Pantheon in Rome. Indeed, Robert's morceau de réception for the Académie Royale was a capriccio view of the Pantheon towering over the Porto di Ripetta. We can assume he recorded the temple in his sketchbook for a topographically accurate painting of the Pantheon and its surrounding square, signed and dated 1776 (executed after his return to Paris), was sold in these Rooms, 11 December 2003, lot 34.