Hubert Robert

Hubert Robert
Period: 1754-1757
Profession: Painter Born: Paris, May 22, 1733 – died: Paris, April 15, 1808. In 1754, he left for Rome with Étienne François de Choiseul, recently appointed French ambassador to Rome. He spent eleven years in Rome, a remarkably long time for a young man with no official position at the Académie de France in Rome, but despite failing to win the Grand Prix for painting, he was allowed to join the boarders at the Palazzo Mancini. There he met the young Jean Honoré Fragonard and the abbé de Saint-Non, a distinguished amateur who commissioned them and the painter and draughtsman Claude-Louis Châtelet to produce drawings of Italian cities, antiquities and works of art for publication. The Abbé de Saint-Non took Hubert Robert to Naples in April 1760 to visit the excavations at Pompeii, which inspired his
capricci (imaginary landscapes).