Although not well known today, Hubert Robert was one of the most popular painters of 18th-century France. Renowned for landscapes in which ancient monuments and modern buildings were arranged in imaginary scenes called architectural capriccios, he was nicknamed “Robert des ruines” by the philosopher Denis Diderot. An interior decorator and landscape designer as well, he frequented intellectual and artistic circles that included the painter Élisabeth Louise Vigée le Brun and the Enlightenment philosopher Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin.
In the 1780s, Robert chronicled the breakdown of aristocratic society in images of the destruction of royalist monuments, and he was imprisoned during the French Revolution. After narrowly escaping the guillotine, he went on to serve as the first “keeper of paintings” at the Louvre. Organized by the National Gallery of Art in collaboration with the Louvre, “Hubert Robert, 1733-1808,” which opens Sunday, June 26, features more than 100 paintings and works on paper in the first survey of his career since 1933. (Through Oct. 2, National Gallery of Art, Washington; 212-737-4215, nga.gov.)