Robert’s Work as a Draftsman: Sketches in Red Chalk
Hubert Robert, Herdsmen Crossing a Waterfall, 1770, red chalk on white laid paper (National Gallery of Art)
Robert, known as a master painter, was also an excellent draftsman. Throughout his lifetime, the artist made an extensive collection of nearly a thousand chalk drawings, preparatory sketches in pen, and watercolors. A large majority of his sketches were considered completed works in themselves. Numerous sketches by Robert are rendered in red chalk.. This medium was portable and could produce shadowing in ways that mediums, such as watercolor, could not. This medium was most likely introduced to him by Giovanni Battista Piranesi1, whose work Robert knew of The artist often used sketchbooks for preparatory drawings while traveling in Rome, documenting the views and monuments he saw, and continued the practice late into his career.2
Outside of his sketches of ruins, Robert also rendered numerous drawings and sketches of the French countryside, including the inhabitants and lifestyles of these populations. Herdsmen Crossing a Waterfall, made in 1770, depicts two small boys fishing near a waterfall. A herdsman leads his cattle across a wooden bridge above the waterfall. Robert captures the ephemerality of the waterfall crashing by, with the white water barely outlined against the structural forms of the rocks and trees nearby. Differences in the thickness of the strokes delineate the textures of the shrubbery, the boulders, and the leaves. Despite the quaint subject matter, Robert’s decision to use red chalk captures a monumentality in the sketch. The herdsman and billowing tree tower over the fishermen, while the power and speed of the wave rushes by.
Robert’s draftsmanship, especially in red chalk drawings, demonstrates his skill and interest in different artistic mediums and subject matter. As well, it is evident that Robert treated his drawings and sketches as finished products in itself, rather than using them as simply stepping stones for his larger paintings.
KC
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1 Grasselli, Margaret Morgan, and Yuriko Jackall. “Robert, Master Draftsman.” Hubert Robert. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2016, 14-15.
2 Ibid., 13.