See Villot, Notice des tableaux du Louvre; C. Blanc, Hist. des peintres; Feuillet de Conches, Correspondance de L. L. Robert; Julius Meyer, Gesch. mod. fr. Malerei.
ROBERT-FLEURY, JOSEPH NICOLAS (1797–1890), French
painter, was born at Cologne. He was sent by his family to
Paris, and after travelling in Italy returned to France and
made his first appearance at the Salon in 1824; his reputation,
however, was not established until three years later, when
he exhibited “Tasso at the Convent of St Onophrius.” Endowed
with a vigorous original talent, and with a vivid imagination,
especially for the tragic incidents of history, he soon rose
to fame, and in 1850 succeeded Granet as member of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1855 he was appointed professor and in 1863 director of the École des Beaux-Arts, and in the following year he went to Rome as director of the French
Academy in that city. Among his chief Works are: “A
Reading at Mme. de Sévigné’s,” “Scene of St Bartholomew,” “Henry IV. taken to the Louvre after his Assassination” (1836); “Triumphal Entry of Clovis at Tours” (1838), at the Versailles Museum; “Le Colloque de Poissy” (1840), at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris; “The Children of Louis XVI. in the Temple” (1840); “Marino Faliero”; “An Auto-da-fé,” “Galileo before the Holy Office,” at the Luxembourg Museum; “Christopher Columbus received by the Spanish Court” (1847), at the same gallery; “The Last Moments of Montaigne” (1853); and “Charles V. in the Monastery of Yuste” (1857). He died in Paris in 1890.
His son, Tony Robert-Fleury (1837–), French painter, was born in Paris, and studied under his father and under Delaroche and Léon Coignet. His first picture at the Salon, in 1866, was a large historical composition of the “Warsaw Massacres on April 8, 1861.” In the following year his “Old Women in the Place Navone, Rome” was bought for the Luxembourg Museum, as was also the “Last Day of Corinth” in 1870. In 1880 he painted a ceiling for the Luxembourg, representing “The Glorification of French Sculpture.” Tony Robert-Fleury became president of the Société des Artistes français in succession to Bouguereau. He acquired a great reputation for his historical compositions and portraits; and from his atelier have issued a great number of the best-known painters of our day.
ROBERTS, DAVID (1796–1864), Scottish painter, was born
at Stockbridge, Edinburgh, on the 24th of October 1796. He
was apprenticed by his father, a shoemaker, for seven years to
a painter and house-decorator; and during this time he employed
his evenings in the study of art. In 1820 he formed the
acquaintance of Clarkson Stanfield, then painting at the Pantheon,
Edinburgh, at whose suggestion he sent three pictures
in 1822 to the Exhibition of Works by Living Artists, held
in Edinburgh. In the same year he removed to London,
where he worked for the Coburg Theatre, and was afterwards
employed, along with Stanfield, at Drury Lane. In 1824 he
exhibited at the British Institution a view of Dryburgh Abbey,
and sent two works to the first exhibition of the Society of
British Artists, of which he was elected president in 1831.
In the same autumn he visited Normandy, and the works
which were the results of this excursion began to lay the foundation
of the artist’s reputation—one of them, a view of Rouen
Cathedral, being sold for eighty guineas. His scenes for an
opera, The Seraglio, executed two years later, and the scenery
for a pantomime dealing with the naval victory of Navarino,
and two panoramas executed jointly by him and Stanfield,
were among his last work for the theatres. In 1829 he exhibited
the “Departure of the Israelites from Egypt,” in which his style
first becomes apparent; three years afterwards he travelled in
Spain and Tangiers, returning in the end of 1833 with a supply
of effective sketches, elaborated into attractive and popular
paintings. His “Interior of Seville Cathedral” was exhibited
in the British Institution in 1834, and sold for £300; and he
executed a fine series of Spanish illustrations for the Landscape
Annual of 1836, while in 1837 a selection of his Picturesque
Sketches in Spain was reproduced by lithography.
In 1838 Roberts made a long tour in the East, and accumulated a vast collection of sketches of a class of scenery which had hitherto been hardly touched by British artists, and which appealed to the public with all the charm of novelty. The next ten years of his life were mainly spent in elaborating these materials. An extensive series of drawings was lithographed by Louis Haghe in Sketches in the Holy Land and Syria, 1842–1849. In 1851, and again in 1853, Roberts visited Italy, painting the “Ducal Palace, Venice,” bought by Lord Londesborough, the “Interior of the Basilica of St Peter’s, Rome,” “Christmas Day, 1853,” and “Rome from the Convent of St Onofrio,” presented to the Royal Scottish Academy. His last volume of illustrations, Italy, Classical, Historical and Picturesque, was published in 1859. He also executed, by command of Queen Victoria, a picture of the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1839 he was elected an associate and in 1841 a full member of the Royal Academy; and in 1858 he was presented with the freedom of the city of Edinburgh. The last years of his life were occupied with a series of views of London from the Thames. He had executed six of these, and was at work upon a picture of St Paul’s Cathedral, when, on the 25th November 1864, he died suddenly of apoplexy.
A Life of Roberts, compiled from his journals and other sources by James Ballantine, with etchings and pen-and-ink sketches by the artist, appeared in Edinburgh in 1866.
ROBERTS, FREDERICK SLEIGH ROBERTS, Earl (1832–), British soldier, second son of General Sir Abraham Roberts, G.C.B., was born at Cawnpore, India, on the 30th of September 1832. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and Addiscombe, he obtained a commission in the Bengal Artillery on 12th December 1851. In the following year he was posted to a field battery at Peshawar, where he also acted as aide-de-camp to his father, who commanded the Peshawar division. In 1856 Roberts was appointed to the quartermaster-general’s department of the staff, in which he remained for twenty-two years, passing from one grade to another until he became quartermaster-general in India. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857, Roberts, at first, was staff officer to the movable column operating against the mutineers in the Punjab, successively commanded by Colonels Neville Chamberlain and John Nicholson, but, towards the end of June, he joined the Delhi Field Force, and was deputy assistant quartermaster general
with the artillery during the operations against Delhi.
He was wounded in the light of the 14th of July, but was
sufficiently recovered in September to take command as a
regimental officer of the left half of No. 2 Siege Battery during the siege. He rejoined the headquarters staff for the assault, and took part in the storm and subsequent seven days’ fighting in the city. He then accompanied Colonel Greathed’s column to Cawnpore, and during September and October was present at the actions of Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Agra, Bithur and Kanauj. He served under Sir Colin Campbell at the second relief of Lucknow in November, at the battle of Cawnpore on the 6th of December, and the subsequent pursuit and defeat of the Gwalior contingent near Shinrajpur. Roberts distinguished himself at the engagement of Khudaganj, on the 2nd of January 1858, by capturing, in single-handed combat, a standard from two sepoys, and also by cutting down a sepoy about to kill a sowar. For these acts of gallantry he was recommended for the Victoria Cross. He was present at the reoccupation of Fatehgarh on the 6th of January, the storm of Mianganj in February, the siege and capture of Lucknow in March, and the action at Kursi on the 22nd of that month, after which he went home on sick leave. For his services in the Mutiny he was seven times mentioned in dispatches, received the medal with three clasps, the Victoria Cross, and on his promotion to captain, in October 1860, a brevet majority. On the 17th of May 1859 he married, at Waterford, Miss Nora Bews, and on his return to India was entrusted with the organization of the viceroy’s camps during the progresses through Oudh, the North-West Provinces, the Punjab and Central India in 1860 and 1861. In December 1863 he took part, under
