Fountain on a Palace Terrace (Free interpretation "Villa d`Este, Tivoli")
Framesize 38.50 x 50.00 x 4.90 cm
In the latter half of the century, when Robert was in Rome, extensive excavations began at the recently discovered ancient cities of Herculaneum (1738) und Pompeii (1748). The sensational finds soon attracted amateur archaeologists from all over Europe and increased the demand for antique objects or souvenir replicas and artistic renderings of ruined palaces and temple complexes.
Robert displayed great technical skill at realising this trend in small-scale paintings. He produced striking landscape paintings with romantically situated buildings and picturesque motifs which had little in common with reality. As in the painting Fountain on a Palace Terrace, the artist incorporated pastoral scenes into a staged architectural background. The slanting knotty tree on right, the slightly dilapidated and partially overgrown terrace walls, together with the washerwomen at the fountain and the promenading ladies and gentlemen, lead the viewer into a charming pastoral idyll. The cloud-covered sky, the light effect and the landscape in gradated tones of brown and green guide the eye to the small-scale figures clad in pastose shades of yellow, red and blue, in front of the water basin.
The painting seems like an elegy, a mournful resonance of past times. Here is the utopia of the aristocratic society: an idealised image in a dreamscape – far removed from any political realit
HABERSATTER Thomas: Robert Hubert, Fountain on a palace terrace, in: DUCKE Astrid, HABERSATTER Thomas, OEHRING Erika: Masterworks. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2015, p. 132