RKD STUDIES

Besides recreational and social activities among artists, artistic production and its diffusion are equally crucial factors for understanding the international dimension of Rome as an art centre. In the careers of often young painters, the ability to make oneself known in order to sell artworks was an important skill. This was especially true at a time when the art market was replacing older forms of patronage and was becoming more and more the main scene for artistic exchanges.¹

Here again, Alexandre Robert's correspondence is revealing. His hesitations about his career and his strategies to navigate the art market in Rome could be the topic of a separate study. Let us just briefly sketch a few outlines here.

As explained above, Robert arrived in Rome in August 1843. His first idea was to become a history painter, a choice that seemed to be – in his view – the only path to take for a student of the Brussels Academy, and particularly for a pupil of the classical painter Navez. However, Robert was unsure if he would be able to reach this goal: ‘I consider this class of artists to be of such a superior order that I hardly dare pretend to be part of it’.² History painting, indeed, was a very demanding genre. In fact, the famous examples of Renaissance paintings they saw in Rome discouraged the two Belgians: ‘The Vatican was a terrible blow to us. The Sistine Chapel annihilated us’, Robert wrote to his master Navez.³ In time, he became increasingly aware that moving away from history painting towards another genre would offer better opportunities. After a trip to Venice in the summer of 1844, he declared that he would renounce history painting once and for all: ‘A more familiar genre awaits me’.⁴

Some first successes encouraged him. By the end of 1844 or the very beginning of 1845, Robert exhibited a small genre painting depicting a ‘scene of poor people in the Roman countryside’. Almost immediately after it was put on display, the painting was purchased by Prince Borghese, as Portaels wrote.⁵ Though this was a promising start in his new career as a genre painter, Robert’s scenes depicting monks would become even more successful.

In December 1845, an exhibition was organised in Rome in honour of the Russian Tsar Nicholas I during his visit to the Eternal City. These special exhibitions held to mark the presence of European sovereigns in Rome have been studied in the context of the exhibition Maestà di Roma (2003), most notably the one held in December 1845 for the Tsar.⁶ In other occasions, the Russian monarch mainly purchased and commissioned sculptures in Rome, destined for the new Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. At the December 1845 exhibition, however, he acquired only one sculpture and no less than 11 paintings. Among those paintings was A scene of Capuchins monks painted by Robert. The enthusiastic comments of Robert himself, but also of his friends, were in no short supply. He wrote to Portaels:

‘Great news. While you have sold to the King of the Belgians, I, Alexandre Robert de Trazegnies, have just sold to whom? To the Emperor of all the Russias. My Capuchins, you know, these three good Capuchins caught his eye and he bought them as soon as he saw them. I can only approve of that’.⁷

This important success brought about other sales, especially among Russian visitors to the Eternal City. Robert painted several versions of those Capuchins, which were sold either directly from his workshop, or were commissioned from him: ‘A Russian lady came again to order a reproduction of these unfortunate Capuchins. They are definitely all the rage and it would be good to always have one in the shop’.⁸ In 1846, Robert exhibited another version (Three Capuchins) at the annual exhibition of the Società degli Amatori e Cultori delle Belle Arti in Piazza del Popolo.⁹ Once more, it was quickly sold and triggered several new commissions of similar versions.¹⁰ Robert’s drawings preserved in Liège contain some examples of preparatory sketches [16], possibly for paintings. Further research should help to identify and locate such paintings, if preserved, across European collections. A small Praying monk was acquired by the Belgian representative in Rome, Emile de Meester de Ravenstein in the 1840s [17].

His successes even made Robert consider the possibility of staying in Rome indefinitely. Yet 1848 was on the horizon, along with its unstable political situation which compelled foreign well-to-do travelers to leave or avoid Rome, thereby depriving artists of an important source of commissions, as Robert himself noted. In the summer of 1848, he left Rome for good. Soon thereafter Joseph Stallaert (1825-1903), another of Navez' pupils, who had obtained the Prix de Rome in 1847, would recall how Robert had been ‘a true friend to all Belgians in Rome whom we miss every day’.¹¹

16
Alexandre Robert,
Seated monk, ca. 1842-1849,
pencil and color pencil on paper, 455 x 302 mm,
property of the French Community of Belgium, inv. no. APC 1042/112

17
Alexandre Robert,
Praying monk, n.d.
oil on canvas, 24 x 19,2 cm,
Museum Hof van Busleyden, Mechelen, inv.no. S0152