ROBERT, Hubert (Paris, 1733 – Paris, 1808)
The son of an officer of the Marquis de Stainville, Hubert Robert was educated in the Collège de Navarre. Possibly towards 1751 he studied drawing with the sculptor René-Michel Slodtz. Three years later, he travelled to Italy with the Marquis’ son, the Count of Stainville, the newly appointed French ambassador to Rome and the main protector of the painter during his youth. Hubert Robert remained in Italy from 1754 to 1765. Although he did not study at the Académie Royale in Paris, he joined the Académie de France in Rome—as a pensionnaire between 1759 and 1762—where he studied perspective with the painter Giovanni Paolo Pannini, with whom he may have collaborated in the elaboration of urban views of Rome. Robert also studied the engravings of ancient ruins by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and met Jean-Honoré Fragonard, with whom he shared a style of painting characterised by wide and laden brushstrokes.
Having returned to Paris, Hubert Robert joined the Académie Royale in 1766. Between 1767 and 1798 he exhibited regularly in the Salon his fantastic views of urban architecture and imaginary ruins, which won him the nickname of “Robert des Ruines”. In 1778 he was appointed “Dessinateur des Jardins du Roi”—a title which enabled him to work in the gardens of Versailles—and in 1784 he became keeper of the paintings at the Musée Royal, living at the Louvre. He also travelled throughout France on various occasions, attracted in particular by the Roman monuments in Languedoc, such as the Maison Carré in Nîmes and the Pont du Gard, the subjects of a number of his paintings.
After the French Revolution, Hubert Robert was imprisoned from 1793 to 1794. Nevertheless, a year later, he was appointed curator of the Musée du Louvre. A few paintings depicting the events of Paris of that time and his famous views of the Main Gallery of the Musée du Louvre date from the 1790s. Hubert died on 15 April 1808 in his apartment in Paris.
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