Suspicious personality for the Revolutionary Supervisory Committee, Hubert Robert was imprisoned from October 22, 1793 to January 31, 1794 at Sainte Pélagie, then part to the Saint Lazare prison, until his release, August 4, 1794, shortly after the fall of Robespierre. During his incarceration, he painted plates and produced drawings, including portraits of his fellow prisoners. These works are testimonies of this period. In 1795, returned to his functions at the Central Museum of the Arts as Head of Tables, functions which he kept until 1802, for twenty years, Hubert Robert painted around thirty views, real and imaginary, of the Louvre and its gallery including the famous Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie du Louvre in ruins, which closes @ganymedesrocks‘ iconography.
Although, Hubert Robert was so closely identified with images of majestic architectural decay that made him acquire the nickname “Robert des Ruines”, extending a trend, set by panini, this never stopped @ganymedesrocks from wondering, where to draw that fine line, which separates the painter–a fully emancipated artist who spent eleven years at the French Academy in Rome, where his budding talents inspired, earning him to befriend major period artists, such as Pajou, de Wailly, but also striking his indefectible friendship with Jean-Honoré Fragonard, gaining the admiration of Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who wrote of his natural wit, one that made of him not only a highly cultivated man, but one devoid of pedantry, which in those times enchanted, for such rare trait was further escorted by an inexhaustible gaiety, which made of him, the most agreeable man one would hope to meet in society. It is that reputation, where my mind in a dialogue with my eye, cannot dissociate for my hand to translate his mature imagery, thinking his art had to intuitively be in tune with the time. After all, born in 1733, not from the gentry, but from a family who were appreciated by them, allowing him to grow up in a privileged environment. His father, at the service of the Stainville family, allowed for the future painter to benefit from an outstanding education, first at the College de Navarre where a professor quickly spotted his skilled and refined inclinations; predisposing him to be accepted to the studio of the great sculptor Michel-Ange Slodtz. By 1754, the Count de Stainville, known as Étienne-François de Choiseul-Beaupré-Stainville, count then duke, [Choiseul-Stainville (1758) before inheriting the tile of duc d'Amboise (1764)], his patron, but also an earnestly proud protector of this young talented man, he offered to accompany to Rome, as himself joined his new ambassadorial appointment. Hubert Robert, traveling in such company, entered the academy under the best auspices possible. There, he frequented the engraving workshop of Piranesi, where sensitized to Antiquity, gave him a sense of architectural perspective so remarkable he became accepted to perfect his skills with no other than Giovanni Paolo Panini. Building on his reputation as an architectural designer, Hubert Robert, when returning to Paris, presented the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture his first work, one after sketches he drew in Naples, Italy, in July 1766. Not only was he approved and received by that Academy, but also became hailed by critics, among whom the influential Denis Diderot, who continuously promoted his skills from 1767 to 1771. Although Louis XV, still at the reins of France, the winds of a French Revolution were gaining force. Considering who were his patrons, protectors, influencers and critics, it is almost impossible, for such an enlightened mind, not to have intuitively felt the century caving toward a societal schism. Observing his works, the time when appointed ‘Keeper of the King’s paintings at the Museum (the future Louvre), and Counselor at the Academy - it hardly can be believed that, as he was consulted to plan the transformations of the ‘Grande Galerie’, where the Royal collections were to become accessible to the public, Robert would not have sensed a peril, that of a Kingdom ostensibly targeted by revolutionary intentions. Granted, the works posted here where painted after all such projects unfolded, yet how not to presume all these allegories to have been fed by greater fears than optimism. It is in that state of mind difficult not to remind ourselves these words written by Denis Diderot: “O beautiful, sublime ruins! […] Time stops for those who admire. How little I have lived! How little did my youth last! […] The ideas that ruins awaken in me are great. Everything is annihilated, everything perishes, everything passes away. Only the world remains. Only time lasts. How old this world is! I walk between two eternities. From the fact that I cast my eyes, the objects that surround me announce an end to me, and resign myself to the one that awaits me. What is my ephemeral existence, compared to that of this sagging rock, this hollow valley, this tottering forest, these masses suspended above my head and shaking”
