Terrace in an Italian Garden, c.1760 (red chalk on paper)

One of the most preeminent artists of the Enlightenment, Hubert Robert is known for his large red chalk landscape drawings conceived as independent works. This view of an artfully overgrown garden, populated solely by a classical sculpture and a laundress with her child, was long attributed to Robert’s contemporary, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, with whom Robert worked side by side in the environs of Rome. The stillness of a Roman summer afternoon and the transitory effects of light are conveyed by Robert’s use of untouched paper to produce highlights in the varying densities of the chalk. 1760 (circa)