1764
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Les Soirées de Rome: L'Arc de triomphe is a 1764 by Hubert Robert, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Hubert Robert painted a grand old arch in Rome, its stones worn but still standing. The arch glows in soft evening light. A few people walk past, tiny next to the huge stone. This wasn’t a real scene. Robert mixed real ruins with made-up figures. He turned etchings into dreamy, half-finished stories. The arches feel both real and imaginary. Look up Hubert Robert (French, 1733–1808) to see more of his Rome dreams.
Derived from his own pen-and-ink drawings, this suite of etchings features fictional characters situated near recognizable buildings and statues in Rome. On the title page, Robert dedicated the suite to Marguerite Le Compte, who visited Rome in 1764 in the company of the wealthy author and art enthusiast Claude Henri Watelet. Both Le Compte and Watelet were amateur etchers, and they socialized with a group that included artists and printmakers centered at the academies in Italy. Robert’s dedication was likely motivated by the hope of future patronage from Le Compte. She may be the generous…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Hubert Robert (French pronunciation: ; 22 May 1733 – 15 April 1808) was a French painter in the school of Romanticism, noted especially for his landscape paintings and capricci, or semi-fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France.
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