ABSTRACT
Prices and sale histories can be compared for “prime” versions and replicas, the production of which was an important part of David Roberts’s easel practice. Roberts’s most spectacular interpretation of the ruins at Baalbek brings center stage the six columns of the Temple of Jupiter, towering over the turmoil of men and camels, with, on the right, a lone wind-swept tree. Exoticism of unfamiliar foreign places, including Scottish scenery, was a key factor in the demand for printed and painted imagery during Roberts’s life. By far the most popular among Roberts’s church interior replicas in oil and watercolor are depictions of St. Sauveur in Caen, Normandy. Roberts was praised in obituaries in the Times and the Daily News, remembered as “certainly the best architectural painter that our country has yet produced” and an artist “familiarly known in so many countries of Europe and beyond it”.
