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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Hubert Robert

The Foot-Bridge

ca. 1775
Oil on canvas.
59 x 47 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
342
(
1930.97
)
ROOM 24
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Hubert Robert was one of the most prolific and admired landscape and view painters of the 18th century. He was a tireless creator, admired by Diderot when he first exhibited at the Salon in 1767, although that critic subsequently criticised Robert for his hastiness and lack of care in his figures and compositions, defects due to the artist’s haste as a result of the high demand for his work. Robert’s passion for his work was evident during the year that he spent in prison between 1793 and 1794, first at Saint-Pélagie then at Saint-Lazare, during which time he continued to paint and draw.

Robert was the son of a valet de chamber of the Marquis de Stainville, a family that would be important to him as the Marquis’ son, the Duke de Choiseul, funded his early years. According to Mariette, Robert first trained with the sculptor René-Michel Slodtz and took part in the Expositions de la jeunesse in 1723 and 1724. In 1754 Robert travelled to Rome with his patron and was admitted to classes at the French Academy in that city. There the Academy’s director Natoire had the perception to appreciate one of Robert’s principal gifts, namely his ability to depict buildings and other architectural structures. Robert spent eleven years in Italy during which time he travelled, drew and organised the notebooks that would provide the basis for his work for the rest of his career. In Rome he was particularly attracted to the work of two artists, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Giovanni Paolo Panini, who were outstanding for their depictions of architecture and who would influence the remainder of Robert’s output. Robert returned to Paris in 1765 and shortly after was admitted as a member of the Académie.

The Footbridge was in the collection of Count Gabriel du Tillet and was acquired by Hans Thyssen-Bornemisza from Wildenstein in New York in 1929. It was included in the exhibition held at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich in 1930 where it was reproduced in the catalogue with brief technical details. Years later it was briefly mentioned by Charles Sterling in the 1969 catalogue of the Collection. He dated the painting to around 1775 on the basis of the style of the figures’ clothes and the treatment of the leaves and branches. Sterling noted that the oval format might suggest that the canvas was a tableau de place and part of the decorative scheme of a room.

The canvas is one of the numerous scenes of gardens that Robert produced and which constituted an important area within his oeuvre, along with architectural views. This charming view features a rustic wooden bridge with a group of figures standing on it who have paused to look down into the water on whose bank an artist is working outdoors, a recurring motif in Robert’s work. The composition is a pleasing one, with a soft chromatic range deployed for important elements such as the sky, the water and the treetops, which harmonise with each other in a carefully selected range of blues, greys and greens, dotted with small areas of earth tones such as the leaves of the trees in the foreground as well as the immediate foreground nearest to the viewer.

Mar Borobia
18th Century18th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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The Foot-Bridge. La pasarela, c. 1775
The Foot-Bridge
Hubert Robert

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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The Foot-Bridge. La pasarela, c. 1775
The Foot-Bridge
Hubert Robert

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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