Artist Sketching a Young Girl

Using red chalk, his favorite drawing material, Hubert Robert rapidly sketched this vignette of a seated artist drawing a young model. Although executed in a loose and confident manner, it was probably made in the artist’s studio. The hatching used for the modelling and shading differs from the technique Robert typically used in his sketches made on the spot, especially those done around 1773 of his wife, Anne-Gabrielle, and his children. Indeed, on several pages of a sketchbook recently acquired by the Louvre, the artist captured scenes of family life in a few lines of red chalk quickly reworked with pen and ink (exh. cat Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2016, Hubert Robert (1733-1808) Un peintre visionnaire, No. 90). By locating the subject of our drawing in an undefined space, the artist draws the viewer's attention to the standing girl who admirably holds her pose—obedient and modest under the attentive gaze of her governess.

An idealized view of an artist at work, the Met's drawing seems to have served a preparatory function as well. The motif of the little girl seen in profile was later used by Robert in a drawing and related painting, The Recitation, exhibited in the Salon of 1773 (op. cit., pp.69-70, fig. 28). The figure of the seated artist, portfolio propped on his legs, appears around the same time in a different work, the View of Rouen dated 1773, for the Archbishop’s palace in Rouen (exh. cat. La Roche-Guyon, 2017, Hubert Robert et la fabrique des jardins, 31, fig. 3).

Draftsmen working outdoors make frequent appearance in Robert’s œuvre, although he would alter details in order to provide original compositions to his numerous clients. The Met’s drawing, however, is exceptional in that the draftsmen Robert depicted were typically shown recording ruins or modern monuments, but only very rarely human figures.

Sarah Catala (August, 2017)