Hubert Robert | Visionary painter

Hubert Robert, (born May 22, 1733, Paris, France - died April 15, 1808, Paris), French🎨 landscape painter sometimes called Robert des Ruines because of his many romantic representations of Roman ruins set in idealized surroundings.

Robert left Paris for Rome in 1754 and studied at the French Academy there.

He also met the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard in Rome, and in 1760 they traveled together with the Abbé de Saint-Non through southern Italy on a drawing expedition.

Robert developed a strong fascination with architecture and ruins, and he was strongly influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the renowned etcher of architectural subjects who was then publishing his great collections of etchings of Roman architecture.

Among Robert’s best-known works from his Roman period is a series of red chalk drawings of the gardens at the Villa d’Este, that feature the garden’s dilapidated Classical-style architecture set in an overgrown landscape and animated with small human figures.

Hubert Robert | The Grande Galerie of the Louvre

Hubert Robert🎨 (22 May 1733 - 15 April 1808), was a French painter🎨, noted for his landscape paintings and picturesque depictions of ruins.

In 1784 Louis XVI appointed him keeper of his pictures and gave him responsibility for creating a museum at the Louvre🎨.

For biographical notes and earlier works by Hubert Robert see:

• Hubert Robert | Visionary painter🎨.

Jorge Ignacio Nazábal, 1962 | Surrealist painter

Jorge Ignacio Nazábal Cowan was born in Havana, Cuba.

He graduated in Biology at the University of Havana in 1985 and worked twelve years as a biologist in a cytogenetics laboratory.

In 1996 he began to study at the Academy of San Alejandro Arts of Havana and graduated from there in 2000.

In 1997 he left his job as a biologist and devoted himself to painting.

Julien Dupré | The Barbizon school of painters

Julien Dupré (March 18, 1851 - April 16, 1910) was a French painter🎨.

He was born in Paris on March 18, 1851 to Jean Dupré (a jeweler) and Pauline Bouillié and began his adult life working in a lace shop in anticipation of entering his family's jewelry business.

The war of 1870 and the siege of Paris forced the closure of the shop and Julien began taking evening courses at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and it was through these classes that he gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts.

Jules Dupré | The Barbizon school of painters

Born in 1811 in Nantes, Jules Dupré (1811-1889) spent his boyhood in L'Isle-Adam on the Oise river, near Paris.

Here he had his early initiation to art, as an apprentice decorator of porcelain in his father's china works.

At the age of twelve, he was sent to Paris, to work in the porcelain factory of an uncle, Arsène Gillet.

His fellow workers included several young artists who would play a role in his later life, among them Narcisse Diaz de la Peña🎨 (1808-1876).

Though during his early years in Paris, Dupré briefly studied with a painter of landscape, Jean-Michel Diebolt (b. 1779), he started on his artistic career nearly without formal training.