15 Facts About Hubert Robert

Young Robert finished his studies with the Jesuits at the College de Navarre in 1751 and entered the atelier of the sculptor Michel-Ange Slodtz who taught him design and perspective but encouraged him to turn to painting.

The marquis de Marigny, director of the Batiments du Roi kept abreast of his development in correspondence with Natoire, director of the French Academy, who urged the pensionnaires to sketch out-of-doors, from nature: Hubert Robert needed no urging; drawings from his sketchbooks document his travels: Villa d'Este, Caprarola.

Hubert Robert worked for a time in the studio of Giovanni Paolo Panini, whose influence can be seen in the Vue imaginaire de la galerie du Louvre en ruine.

Hubert Robert spent his time in the company of young artists in the circle of Piranesi, whose capricci of romantically overgrown ruins influenced him so greatly that he gained the nickname Hubert Robert des ruines.

Hubert Robert is reported to have carved his name into the walls of the Colosseum in 1767.

Hubert Robert was freed one week after the fall of Robespierre.

Hubert Robert narrowly escaped the guillotine when through error another prisoner with a similar name was guillotined in his place.

Hubert Robert had designed the decorations for a little theatre in the new wing at the location of the current staircase Gabriel in the Palace of Versailles.

Hubert Robert's work has more or less of that scenic character which justified his selection by Voltaire to paint the decorations of his theatre at Ferney.

Hubert Robert's work was much engraved by the abbe de Saint-Non, with whom he had visited Naples in the company of Fragonard during his early days; in Italy his work has been frequently reproduced by Chatelain, Linard, Le Veau, and others.

Hubert Robert is noted for the liveliness and point with which he treated the subjects he painted.

Enterprising and prolific, Hubert Robert acted in a role similar to that of a modern-day art director, conceptualizing fashionably dilapidated gardens for several aristocratic clients, summarized by his possible intervention at Ermenonville; there he would have been working with the architect Jean-Marie Morel for the marquis de Girardin, who was the author of Compositions des paysages and had distinct views of his own.

Hubert Robert's set of six Italianate landscape panels painted for Bagatelle were not the inspiration for the formal turfed parterre set in the thinned woodlands, designed by Belanger; the later picturesque extensions of Bagatelle were carried out by its Scottish gardener, William Blaikie.

Hubert Robert's commissioned painting of the long-delayed rejuvenation of the park at Versailles, begun in 1774 with the cutting down of the trees for sale as firewood, is a record of the event, resonant with allegorical meaning.

Hubert Robert was more certainly responsible for the conception of the grotto and cascades of the 'Baths of Apollo,' tucked within a grove of the chateau's park and built to house Francois Girardon's celebrated sculpture group Apollo Attended by Nymphs.