Born in Paris in 1886, Robert Poughéon studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Albert Besnard at the École des Beaux-Arts before joining the École des Arts Décoratifs, where he was the pupil of Charles Lameire and became friends with Jean Dupas. The recipient of the Prix de Rome in 1914, he began his stay at the Villa Medici in 1919, upon the end of the war. Since his return to France in 1923, he regularly exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français and created several large-scale murals, notably for the Church of the Holy Spirit in Paris. Poughéon became a leading figure of the Art Deco movement and participated in the 1937 International Exposition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life in Paris.
During his stay at the Villa Medici in Rome (1919–1923), Robert Poughéon painted landscapes which reflect both his classical training and his appropriation of the Italian landscape painting tradition of nineteenth-century
French artists residing at the Villa Medici. In his Roman compositions, warm, sun-drenched hues meet geometric shapes that emphasise clarity and structure. Our boldly painted Roman Landscape, with its low horizon and textured foreground, exemplifies Poughéon’s take on landscape painting, which reinterpreted a traditionally classical subject matter with modernist techniques.
In 1932, Poughéon loaned this painting for the 18th International Biennale Exhibition of Fine Arts in Venice. On occasion of that edition of the Biennale, Pougheon staged his Italian memories by exhibiting only two works, namely our landscape and his masterpiece, Le Serpent (fig. 1), in which the artist offers our view of the gentle mountains of the Roman countryside in the background.