Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk
Artist	Hubert Robert
Year	1798
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	119.7 cm × 99 cm (47.1 in × 39 in)
Location	Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal

Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk is an oil-on-canvas painting by French painter Hubert Robert, made in 1798. It is held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts since 1964. ^{[1] [2]}

History and description

Hubert Robert had a fascination with the Ancient Egypt, typical of the pre-romanticism of his time. This painting depicts, in an imaginary Egyptian architectural setting, where the Giza pyramids can be seen in the distance, a group of nine young female dancers, wearing white dresses in an antique style and blue and red ribbons at the waist, performing a farandole around the base of an Egyptian obelisk, whose truncated top lies on the ground on the right of the composition, in the shadows. A broken Sphinx is seen at the left, behind the obelisk. The scene is completed by a group of people dressed in more modern attire detailing the ruins, in the lower left, and by musicians playing their instruments perched on a ledge of the obelisk. The tiny figures illustrate the huge dimension, at the distance, of the pyramids. ^{[3] [4]}

Analysis

Some have interpreted the painting as a symbolic reference to the Masonic lodge of the Nine Sisters, and also to the opposition between the ancient and the modern world, or to the Egyptian campaign taken by Napoleon. ^[5]

References