Associate Professor Robert Wellington is an art historian at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory, at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He has published extensively in English and French on the art and culture of Louis XIV’s France. He is a judge on the hit ABC TV series Portrait Artist of the Year.
Robert’s first book, Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past (Ashgate, 2015), was described as ‘an engaging scholarly masterpiece…’ (Burlington Magazine, 2016). It is an academic book informed by deep archival research in France. In it he argues that the most famous palaces and works of art from the age of Louis XIV were part of an extraordinary project of history making. Those works of art weren’t just outrageously opulent possessions of a super-rich monarch. They were based on the latest academic research about the past in hope to guarantee the king’s eternal fame.
ORDER ANTIQUARIANISM AND THE VISUAL HISTORIES OF LOUIS XIV: ARTIFACTS FOR A FUTURE PAST HERE
ORDER VERSAILLES MIRRORED: THE POWER OF LUXURY FROM LOUIS XIV TO DONALD TRUMP HERE
LISTEN TO ROBERT IN CONVERSATION WITH PROF. MATHEW TRINCA ABOUT VERSAILLES MIRRORED FOR THE ANU MEET THE AUTHOR SERIES (12 NOV 2025) HERE
Robert’s second monograph, Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury from Louis XIV to Donald Trump (Bloomsbury, 2025), tracks the enduring fascination with the Sun King’s palace through eight case studies spanning the 17th to 21st centuries. The book demonstrates how the extravagant palace style began as a symbol of the state in the 17th century; how it was adopted by the nouveau riche to show off their financial success in the 19th century; and, remarkably, how that palace look returned to play a role in statecraft in the hands of US President Donald Trump. Wellington links the aristocratic architectural traditions of France, England, and Germany to North America through the lens of Versailles, French architecture, and the decorative arts. Robert has been interviewed about the book by Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Fast Company and has been described as ‘an erudite, entertaining account of the enduring obsession with Versailles and its Sun King’, and ‘lucid and compulsively readable.’
Recognised internationally as an expert on the arts of ancien-régime France, Robert co-edited a collection of essays on the Palace of Versailles with Prof. Mark Ledbury, The Versailles Effect: Objects, Lives, and Afterlives of the Domain (Bloomsbury, 2020).
ORDER THE VERSAILLES EFFECT: OBJECTS, LIVES, AND AFTERLIVES OF THE DOMAIN HERE
Robert was Lead CI on the ARC Discover Project Performing Transdisciplinarity. This project resulted in a major digital publication Choix de Chansons: a digital critical edition. This is the first project of its kind to address the complex transdisciplinary and transmedial nature of both Laborde’s Choix de Chansons, and of eighteenth-century print culture more generally. The complementary disciplines of musicology, art history, and French literature will create a unique transdisciplinary matrix in which our team will ‘perform’ Laborde’s text in order to recreate its original modes of reception, evoking the ways eighteenth-century participants appreciated, decoded, and debated the intersections of music, visual art, and literature.
EXPLORE CHOIX DE CHANSONS: A DIGITAL CRITICAL EDITION HERE
Robert has been a visiting professor at the prestigious Centre André Chastel in Paris and the Université de Quèbec à Montréal. He has a reputation as an engaging public speaker, and has presented numerous conference papers and invited lectures on the art of Louis XIV’s court around the world at venues including the Courtauld Institute, London, the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Frick Collection, New York, Institut Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, and the Château de Versailles.
The students of ANU selected Robert to deliver the ‘Last Lecture’ of the academic year in 2017, an honour that acknowledges his passionate commitment to teaching.
Robert is a member of the advisory panel to the Bloomsbury Academic book series, The Material Culture of Art and Design. He was Lead CI on the ARC Discovery Project, Performing Transdisciplinarity. Robert was an ARC DECRA fellow (2019-2022).
Robert Wellington 