Rouby, John James
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- Rouby, John James
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(1750 - 1812), painter; b. Plymouth, d. Rome.
- 1776 - 1812 Rome, Florence (1789), Naples (Jul. - Dec. 1791), Rome (d. 21 Aug. 1812)
Rouby [or Ruby] was in Rome by 1776 and he stayed in Italy until his death thirty-six years later. Although described as a history painter, his work is known only through some portraits and carefully drawn copies of old masters. By 1776, when Thomas Jones first encountered him at the English Coffee House,1 Rouby had made a copy of Guido Reni's Aurora for the Duke of Dorset.2 By 1779 he had painted the portrait of James Byres's father Patrick (which was sent back to Scotland in 1790 and is now untraced).3 At Easter 1777 'Giovanni Ruby Pittore Inglese eretico 25' was living in the same house as Henry Fuseli in the Strada Felice,4 and in 1779 and 1787 (when his age was given as thirty-five) the English Catholic painter 'Gio.Giacomo Rouby' was living in the Via Babuino, in the same house as one 'Sigra Ma Rosa Mazzotti' (who by 1787 had two small children (aged two and four).5
Rosa was very probably the 'little Roman Gipsey' who had performed on the horizontal wheel in the Borghese Gardens and so enchanted Rouby that he changed his religion and married her.6 Mrs Thomas Banks told Humphry that she was 'the youngest of those girls where Hardwick [Thomas, the architect] lives' and that Rouby had taken '[William] Miller's house as was'.7 Jones said that Rouby's conversion and marriage had been made 'with the Consent & Approbation of his Patron Mr Hackaert'6 - presumably Philipp Hackert, the German landscape painter, with whom Rouby was on a sketching expedition to the Grotto of Aegeria in October 1779,6 and who in September 1783 was to introduce Rouby to Allan Ramsay in Rome.8 It was also through his association with Hackert that Rouby met Goethe (presumably in 1787) who, however, considered the young Englishman an ass ('somaro').9
In 1779 Rouby was advertising in Rome as a history painter ('Ruby over Luigi Aliberti/History'),10 though none of his histories survives. In September 1783 he showed Ramsay a portrait of Hackert's brother, 'which was very like, and also a copy of the famous picture of Cenci [the so-called Beatrice Cenci] in the Colonna done with Indian ink so dextrously that it seemed done with Black chalk,' and the next day produced 'a portfolio of his academic figures which are very clever.'8 Rouby acquired a reputation for these copies (and he was possibly the 'Mr Pang' [? the name seems illegible] 'an English Student' making 'some Chiaroscuros for Mr Stawell' in July 1783.8 Between 1785 and 1790 Sir Richard Colt Hoare acquired a number of such studies in bistre (Stourhead); Hoare had others from J.C. Seydelmann of Dresden, whose style Rouby had so successfully adopted that he became 'in some instances his superior, by giving in a more forcible manner, the style of the master whose works he copied'.(11) In November 1789 Rouby was in Florence, copying Cignani, Leonardo and Rosso in the Uffizi,12 and on 14 September 1790 he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence.(13) From at least July to December 1791 he was in Naples with his wife.14
In 1792 Rouby met Lord Bruce for whom he undertook a number of commissions. Some drawings had been sent to Lord Ailesbury (Lord Bruce's father) by November 1792, apparently the copies from Schidone which Thomas Brand mentioned to Ailesbury in January 1793: 'being both drawn looking the same way is to be sure an objection to their being formal companions, but I hope you think the execution good.'15 There was a portrait of an officer with Vesuvius in the background by Rouby at Attingham dated 1792 (Christie's, 22 Jul. 1938) and a letter from Rouby to Lady Bruce, dated Rome, 17 March 1797,16 mentioned further commissions: 'Heads from the Antique done for His Lordship', copies of 'The St Sebastian at the Capitol and the Magdalen in the Colonna Gallery' finished 'some time ago' (the former 'considerable larger than usual' and 'one of my Finest Drawings'); Rouby 'did not recollect' another commission for a copy from the 'Monte Capitol'; Lady Bruce had made up for the loss of a commission at Bologna by ordering two other drawings, a copy of Guercino's Night 'of the large Size', and a head from Raphael's Heliodorus; Patrick Moir had given him another commission from Lord Bruce, to make a drawing of Titian's Danae in Naples. The same letter also reveals that Rouby had been working for the 4th Earl of Bristol, 'at St Gregory's in the Chapel [oratory] of St Sylvia' (presumably copying the frescoes by Guido Reni), though the damp and cold prevented progress during the winter. (A copy of The Golden Age by A.J. Carstens with figures by Rouby, is in the Thorvaldsen Museum).
Rouby had been listed in Rome in 1793 as a portrait painter, still living on the Via Babuino, 'over the Argentiere' (Rome List) and in April 1794 he had signed (as John James Ruby) the letter of thanks to Prince Augustus from English artists in Rome (Rome List 1794). Little is known of his final years, but in 1799 he was again copying in the Uffizi in April and August (the Fornarina).17 He died in Rome on 21 August 1812.18
1. Jones Memoirs, 53. 2. NRA 1970, 2028, Sackville 8575. 3. Byres MSS (Byres inv.1790). 4. AVR sa, S.Andrea delle Fratte. 5. AVR sa, S.Maria del Popolo. 6. Jones Memoirs, 91. 7. Bell, Banks, 38. 8. Ramsay jnl.MSS (1 Jul., 23, 24 Sep. 1783). 9. Goethe, Tagebucher und Briefe Goethes aus Italien, [1886], 471. 10. Pembroke Papers, 1:274. 11. R.C. Hoare, History of Modern Wilts., 1:70 - 85. 12. Borroni 1987, 107, 111, 121, 135. 13. Wynne 1990, 537. 14. Thorpe letters MSS (27 Jul., 17 Dec. 1791). 15. HMC Ailesbury, 250 - 1 (20 Nov. 1792, 15 Jan. 1793). 16. Attingham MSS. 17. Borroni 1991, 266. 18. F. Noack, Der Deutschtum im Rom, 2:501.