Hubert Robert - LA CASCADE

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Hubert Robert
PARIS 1733 - 1808
LA CASCADE
oil on canvas
252 by 151 cm.; 99 1/4 by 59 1/2 in.


This vast and imposing canvas originally formed part of a set of five large paintings, completed in 1782 for an as yet unknown interior decorative scheme.1 Another from this set, La Débarcadère is the next lot in this sale. All five canvases remained together until their dispersal at auction in 2002. By the early 1780s Hubert Robert had firmly established himself as the foremost exponent of architectural and landscape painting in France. His mastery of large scale landscape decorations, where fantasy was ably blended with topographical or classical architectural elements drawn from his experiences in Italy, had won him patronage of royalty and numbers of wealthy private clients. Among his more notable commissions in this vein were the set of four pictures painted for the Comte d'Artois, later Charles X, in 1778 for Bagatelle near Paris, the four large canvases executed for the dining room of the Château de Méréville in 1788 (Art Institute, Chicago), and another four painted for Louis XVI for the Château at Fontainbleau in the previous year (Louvre, Paris). Robert's success was particularly notable in Russia, where he painted, for example, a series of large scale works for Catherine the Great and also her son the Grand Duke Paul at his palace at Petrovsk. The theme of waterfalls and cascades was a favourite of Robert's, and was often based from his experiences of the great falls at Tivoli in Italy; another even larger canvas in this vein, for example, painted in 1774 and later in the collection of Baron de Cassin was with Wildenstein in New York in 1988.2
This series formerly hung in the private Parisian mansion belonging to Jorge and Graziella Ortiz Linares on the avenue Foch in Paris. The collection was famous for its important French furniture, decorative art and paintings, including works by Watteau and Fragonard, but above all for the collection of French silver. Some idea of the original appearance of the group can be gleaned from a set of watercolours of the interior of the residence by the Russian artist Alexandre Serebriakoff (1907-1994) (fig.1).3 
This and the following lot will both be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Hubert Robert being prepared by Joseph Baillio under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
1. The first and largest of these, titled La Crique, is signed and dated H. Robert 1782.; canvas 238 by 225 cm..
2. J. Stourton, Great Collectors of our time. Art collecting since 1945, London 2007, pp. 34-36.
3. Canvas, 243 by 191 cm.; exhibited, New York, Wildenstein, Hubert Robert: the pleasure of ruins, 1988, p. 34.

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