Hubert Robert

The motif of the mill features in a number of Hubert Robert’s paintings and drawings. The building depicted in the present sheet has been identified as the Moulin-Joli at Colombes, which belonged to Claude Henri Watelet (1718-1786), a wealthy Fermier-general, and an amateur painter and respected etcher, as well as a writer on the Arts and a connoisseur of gardens, with whom Robert became acquainted during his time in Rome in 1763.

In the present sheet Robert has chosen to emphasise the mechanical heart of the mill: the waterwheel. Ever present in Robert’s works are the figures who populate the peripheries of the composition; two can be seen leaning out of a window, upper right and a mother and child are among those who occupy the lower foreground of the drawing.

Another red chalk drawing of the Moulin-Joli at Colombes, dated around 1770-1773, is at the Musée de Valence.¹ In that composition, Robert draws the mill in its entirety, capturing more of the surrounding landscape.

1. G. Faroult and C. Voiriot, Hubert Robert 1733-1808 Une Peintre Visionnaire, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, and Washington, The National Gallery of Art, 2016, pp. 262-263, cat. no. 67, reproduced p. 263