ROBERT, Nicolas (1614-1685)
Velvet Scoter (Drake) (Melanitta fusca)
France: c.1670-1685. Watercolour and gouache over traces of black chalk, on vellum, within a gold border. Inscribed '117' lower right. Sheet size: 10 7/8 x 9 inches. Framed size: 17 3/8 x 15 3/4 inches.
An outstanding example of the work of Nicolas Robert, the greatest natural history artist of the seventeenth century, from the celebrated Marcel Jeanson collection.
The drawing depicts the male Velvet Scoter (Melanitta fusca), a high-latitude diving duck that breeds around boreal lakes from Scandinavia across northern Eurasia and winters on cold marine coasts. Robert renders the male's hallmark features with great precision: the dense, velvety black body; the neat white crescent below the eye; the white wing patch; and the swollen orange-yellow bill. The species' heavy, sea-going build and low swimming posture are captured with unusual naturalness. In the seventeenth century such northern sea-ducks were occasional rarities in France and objects of curiosity in princely collections and menageries. Nicolas Robert was the foremost French painter of flowers and natural history subjects of the seventeenth century, and one of the defining figures in the evolution of scientific illustration. Born at Langres, he first trained as an engraver and made his early reputation in Rome with a suite of floral etchings entitled Fiori diversi (1640). Returning to France, Robert entered the artistic and literary circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, collaborating with the calligrapher Jarry on the celebrated Guirlande de Julie, an album of flowers and madrigals created as a wedding gift for Julie d'Angennes. His luminous technique soon attracted the patronage of Gaston d'Orléans, brother of Louis XIII, who commissioned Robert to record the rare plants cultivated in his gardens at Blois. There Robert perfected his method of painting in gouache on vellum, rendering his subjects with clarity, purity of colour, and an absence of shadow that heightens their sculptural grace. Upon Gaston's death in 1660, the collection of watercolours passed to Louis XIV, and in 1664 Robert was appointed Peintre ordinaire du Roi pour la miniature. Under the direction of Colbert, he was charged with supplying drawings for the royal collections, expanding his range to include birds and animals from the royal menagerie at Versailles. Robert's circle included the engraver Abraham Bosse and Louis de Châtillon, with whom he collaborated on the Recueil des Plantes prepared for the Académie Royale des Sciences and later published in Dodart's Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Plantes (1701). His work was admired by contemporaries such as van Spaendonck for its precision and elegance. The majority of Robert's original drawings are now preserved in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, forming the nucleus of the Vélins du Roi collection; others are held at the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam, and the Hofbibliothek in Vienna. Blunt observed that Robert's achievement marked a new phase in the art of natural history, uniting decorative grace with scientific truth. His surviving watercolours, whether of birds, mammals, or plants, embody the birth of modern Natural History illustration and remain among the most beautiful works of their kind in European art. Robert's works are rare and sought-after today; 15 watercolours on vellum depicting flowers sold at Sotheby's in London in 2022 for £441,000.
Blunt, The Art of Botanical Illustration (1994), p.118-122.
Item #42437
Price: $22,000.00