1787
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
The Obelisk is a 1787 oil by Hubert Robert, a Rococo painting work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
The painting shows a big vaulted space with an obelisk in the middle. It's surrounded by a colonnade. The artist used things he learned in Italy to create this scene. The woman in the niche looks like a sculpture. This painting is interesting because it combines old and new styles. Look up the technique of chiaroscuro to learn more about how artists use light and dark.
This painting is one of four depictions of architectural fantasies by Hubert Robert commissioned by the Marquis de Laborde for his elegant country estate at Méréville, south of Paris. It features a grandiose vaulted space that frames an obelisk, with a peristyle, or colonnade, closing off the distance. Through years of study in Italy, Robert absorbed the vocabulary of Classical architecture and sculpture into his own imaginative language. Here, the female figure in the central niche is based on a first-century sculpture that the artist would have seen during his stay in Rome.
Commissioned with its pendants (1900.382, 1900.384, 1900.385) by Jean Joseph, marquis de Laborde (died 1794), in 1787 for the Château de Méréville (near Etampes); the château was sold by Mme de Laborde, 1819 [see Simone de Lassus, “Quelques Détails inédits sur Méréville,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, année 1976 (1978), p. 286 n. 1]; the château was owned successively by: M. Ters and Mme d’Espagnat (sold 1824); comte de Saint-Roman (sold 1866); duc de Sessa (sold 1868); M. and Mme Beleys (sold 1869); la Société Cail (sold 1874); M. Heddle (sold 1889); Adam Natanson…
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June–November 1, 1934, no. 332. Art Institute of Chicago, Selected Works of Eighteenth-Century French Art in the Collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, January 28–April 25, 1976, no. 14b. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, "Hubert Robert," June 26 - October 2, 2016, cat. 77.
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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