Editing Hubert Robert (section)

==Style and legacy==
[[File:Hubert Robert (French - A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|200px|''A Hermit Praying in the Ruins of a Roman Temple'']]
The quantity of his work is immense, comprising perhaps one thousand paintings and ten thousand drawings.<ref name="Bailey_2016">Colin B. Bailey, "Hubert Robert & the Joy of Ruins", ''The New York Review of Books'' '''63'''.15 (October 13, 2016), pp. 35–37.</ref> The [[Louvre]] alone contains nine paintings by his hand and specimens are frequently to be met with in provincial museums and private collections. 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.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

His work was much engraved by the [[Jean-Claude Richard|abbé de Saint-Non]], with whom he had visited [[Naples]] in the company of [[Jean-Honoré Fragonard|Fragonard]] during his early days; in Italy his work has also been frequently reproduced by Chatelain, Linard, [[Le Veau]], and others.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

He is noted for the liveliness and point with which he treated the subjects he painted. Equally at ease painting small easel pictures or huge decorations, he worked quickly using an ''[[alla prima]]'' technique.<ref>Hubert Robert Biography, [[National Gallery of Art]] https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1832.html</ref> Along with this incessant activity as an artist, his daring character and many adventures attracted general admiration and sympathy. In the fourth canto of his ''L'Imagination'' [[Jacques Delille]] celebrated Robert's miraculous escape when lost in the catacombs.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

===Robert and picturesque gardens===
[[File:Hubert Robert - Cypresses.jpg|thumb|left|70 px|''Cypresses'' (1773), 300 x 75 cm., [[Hermitage Museum|Hermitage]]]]
[[File:Hubert Robert - Landscape with a Triumphal Column.jpg|thumb|70 px|''Triumphal Column'' (1773), 300 x 74 cm., [[Hermitage Museum|Hermitage]]]]
Enterprising and prolific, Robert also 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'' (1777) and had distinct views of his own. In 1786 he began his better documented<ref>Victor Carlson, "Hubert Robert in Rome: Some Pen-and-Wash Drawings" ''Master Drawings'' '''39'''.3 (Autumn 2001, pp. 288-299) p. 291.</ref> collaboration at [[Château de Méréville|Méréville]], with his most significant patron, the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde, who found [[François-Joseph Bélanger]]'s plans too expensive and perhaps too formal.

Though documents are again lacking, Hubert Robert's name is invariably invoked in connection with [[Marie Antoinette]]'s 'premier architecte' [[Richard Mique]] through several phases of the creation of an informal landscape garden at the [[Petit Trianon]], and the setting of the ''[[petit hameau]]''. Robert's contribution to garden design was not in making practical ground plans for improvements but in providing atmospheric inspiration for the proposed effect.<ref>Compare the role of [[Louis Moreau]] at [[Château de Bagatelle|Bagatelle]].</ref> At Ermenonville and at Méréville "Hubert Robert's paintings both recorded and inspired", according to W.H. Adams:<ref>Adams1979:104</ref> Robert's four large ruin fantasies, painted in 1787 for Méréville<ref>At the [[Art Institute of Chicago]].</ref> may be searched in vain for direct connections with the garden. Hubert's paintings of the Moulin Joly of his friend [[Claude-Henri Watelet]] render the fully-grown atmosphere of a garden that had been under way since 1754. His set of six Italianate landscape panels painted for Bagatelle<ref>At the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]].</ref> were not the inspiration for the formal turfed parterre set in the thinned woodlands, designed by Bélanger; the later picturesque extensions of Bagatelle were carried out by its Scottish gardener, William Blaikie.<ref>Joseph Baillio, "Hubert Robert's Decorations for the Château de Bagatelle" ''Metropolitan Museum Journal'' '''27''' (1992), pp. 149–182.</ref> Robert's commissioned painting of the long-delayed rejuvenation of the park at [[Palace of Versailles|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.<ref>Paula Rea Radisich, "The King Prunes His Garden: Hubert Robert's Picture of the Versailles Gardens in 1775" ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' '''21'''.4 (Summer 1988), pp. 454–471.</ref> 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 [[François Girardon]]'s celebrated sculpture group ''Apollo Attended by Nymphs''.