Jeune femme lisant (Mme Robert), 1924

Paul Théophile Robert  

Paul Théophile ROBERT is an artist born in Switzerland in 1879 and died in 1954.

Théophile Robert was the son of Léo-Paul Robert and Berthe Robert-de Rutté, brother of Philippe Robert and Paul-André Robert, his grandfather was Aurélien Robert. His granddaughter Marie-Françoise is an artist, as is his son Jerry Haenggli. Théophile Robert married Agnès Miéville in 1908.

He received his first artistic training from his father. In 1899, he stayed in Florence. From 1900 to 1907, he stayed in Paris, where he attended the School of Fine Arts. He then moved to Saint-Blaise and studied the work of Paul Cézanne, Ferdinand Hodler and Maurice Denis. In 1918 Robert returned to Paris.

He gained international recognition as a representative of neoclassicism, whose work was influenced by purists like Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. After his return to Saint-Blaise in 1929, he turned to monumental religious art. In 1929, he designed a way of the cross in the church of Tavannes and a similar one in 1933 in the parish church of Wünnewil. In 1939, he undertook the interior design of the Catholic Church of Saint-Blaise.

Théophile Robert died on February 24, 1954 at the age of 74 in Neuchâtel.