Demolition of the Chateau Meudon

Demolition of the Château of Meudon, a landscape painting by Hubert Robert in 1806 is one of the most famous paintings inspired by the French revolution. More than ten years prior to composition, Demolition of the Chateau Meudon shows a scenario from the revolution. The Ancien Regime's royal house, Chateau Meudon, was looted during the revolution.

Since Robert had lived in Rome, he was knowledgeable about capriccio's paintings. The architectural painting style known as Capricci combines fact and fantasy for emotional effect. In order to represent a moment frozen in time, the artist has included elements of the landscape that are no longer present in this image.

In order to convey the chateau's past significance, he gives it enormous dimensions and dazzling light, throwing a shadow over the different players involved in its destruction. The neoclassical technique is used to provide a distinct axis for the picture in the chateau's dominant position, while Romanticism is apparent in the artist's evocation of emotion through the fictional remembrance of a lost moment.