HUBERT ROBERT (1733 - 1808)
DRAFTSMEN IN THE GROUNDS OF A ROMAN VILLA
Pencil with pen & ink and wash, on laid paper
With a partial Strasbourg Lily watermark
17.5 x 23 cm
PROVENANCE
Folio 26 of the album of 101 drawings made in Italy by Hubert Robert;
(Likely) Sold as part of the artist's studio sale, Paris, 05.04.1809;
The Countess of Béhague (1870-1939) [this work folio 8];
Thence by descent in the family of Ganay;
The Estate of the Marquis de Ganay, Sotheby's, Monaco, 01.12.1989, lot 34 (ill. p.41);
Private collection France
EXHIBITED (the album)
Paris, Galerie Caileux, 1957, Hubert Robert - Louis Moreau: Exposition du Cent-Cinquantenaire De Leur Mort, cat. no. 1;
Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1987, Hubert Robert: Drawings & Watercolours, cat. no. 12
LITERATURE (the album)
R.O. Parks, Piranesi, exhib.cat., Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, 1961, p. 74;
J. Scott, Piranesi, London (1975), p. 175 and p. 311, note 9;
V. Carlson, Hubert Robert: Drawings & Watercolours (exhib. cat.), Washington (1987) cat. no. 12
Robert enjoyed depicting his fellow artists in the act of drawing, and they populate many of his sketches and paintings both from his student days to his later monumental paintings, almost becoming a romanticising motif in the latter. An example of the latter, previously with Nicholas Hall and recently given as part of Aso Tavitian's gift to the Clark Institute, Williamstown, shows a similar arrangement of artists sketching under the instruction of a teacher (see fig. I).
Although Robert's studies from this period would often inspire elements of his more fantastical capricci, the present scene almost certainly taken from life: pensionnaires at the French Academy in Rome were strongly encouraged to draw what they saw around the city, a tenet which had been evinced from the earliest days of the Academy in the late 17th century, particularly under the stewardship of Nicolas Vleughels, an early Director of the Academy. Robert was however one of the first artists to capture the sight of these young artists themselves engaged in the practice, and his drawings are valuable records of artistic life and study in Rome at this time.
This sheet comes from one of the few extant Roman sketchbooks of Robert's, in this instance an album that was kept complete until as recently as 1989, and which almost certainly featured in the artist's studio sale of 1809. Drawings from the same album can now be found in collections worldwide, including the Louvre, the Getty Museum, the Morgan Library, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It is thought that this particular sketchbook was used during Robert's final years in Rome, as two drawings from it are dated, one to 1764 and the other to 1765. There were over fifty sketchbooks listed in the Robert sale in 1809, with this one now known as the 'De Ganay' album, after its previous owners the Marquises de Ganay.