Hubert Robert, an architectural whim featuring a bridge over a canal

The second painting by Hubert Robert held at the Château d’Aulteribe is signed and dated in the artist’s own hand. Once again, it is a caprice, with no reference to a specific location, but featuring numerous motifs that recur in the painter’s work, such as the washerwomen, the triumphal arch and the view beneath the arch.

The latter allows the artist to make the most of the play of light and shadow whilst providing a frame for the scene depicted. The Cognacq-Jay Museum holds a painting by Hubert Robert which employs the same technique, depicting a bridge beneath which a woman has come to fetch water. The way in which the genre scene is framed by the bridge, completely encircling the subject and focusing the viewer’s gaze, is truly spectacular.

In Aulteribe’s painting, the technique is even more distinctive, as this framing effect is offset to the left, much like a spotlight would be directed onto a section of a stage. The dramatic effect of the framing here is complemented by that of the lighting, which draws attention to a ‘street scene’ on the water, with gondolas and passengers crossing from one bank to the other. We are therefore in the presence of a work that is ‘hybrid’ in its inspiration, lying between the capriccio—that is, a composition featuring figures set against a backdrop of imaginary ancient ruins—and the veduta, which is a realistic depiction of urban activity and the landscape. The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg holds a painting by Robert in this vein: it depicts architectural ruins forming two bridges spanning a canal along which urban activity unfolds.

Hubert Robert, 1733–1808: A Visionary Painter, [Paris, Musée du Louvre, 9 March–30 May 2016], exhibition catalogue edited by Guillaume Faroult, Paris, 2016.