Hubert Robert

Hubert Robert was a late 18th century French painter of landscapes and ancient Italian and French ruins. Robert studied extensively in Italy as a young man, and was fascinated with the contrast between modern life and remnants of the ancient world. His paintings often blurred the line between the crumbling world he observed and projections of his own imagined past. A loyalist to French monarchs, Robert exhibited regularly in the French Academy before he was jailed during the French Revolution, just narrowly escaping the guillotine. Despite resistance to his politics during his lifetime, Robert is remembered fondly for his mystical landscapes.