HUBERT ROBERT:
AN HOMAGE
2022 Personal Project
Homage to Hubert Robert, 1733-1808
“Everything vanishes, everything dies, only time endures.”
The painting of Classical ruins had reached the zenith of its popularity when Hubert Robert, the leading French practitioner of this specialty, was commissioned in 1787 to paint a suite of four canvases for a wealthy financier’s château at Méréville, France. In his use of ruins, Robert embodied the notion of the relationship of mankind and the built environment to nature that was expressed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot: “Everything vanishes, everything dies, only time endures.” Those images represent a personal reinterpretation of his outstanding work.
