Hubert Robert

Vigee Le Brun painted this portrait of her friend Hubert Robert in 1788, the last calm year before everything changed. She was the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, and Robert was a celebrated painter of Roman ruins and imaginary landscapes who also helped turn the royal palace of the Louvre into a public museum. She shows him not stiffly posed but caught mid-thought, hair loose, palette and brushes in hand, looking off as if a view had just caught his eye. Within a year the Revolution began. She fled France for more than a decade, and Robert was jailed during the Terror, painting on plates and cell walls to pass the time.