Hyacinthe Rigaud (18 July 1659, Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales)–29 December 1743, Paris) was a French baroque painter of Catalan origin whose career was based in Paris.
He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period. For Jacques Thuillier, professor at the Collège de France :
“ Hyacinthe Rigaud was one of those French painters who knew the highest celebrity under the Ancien Régime. This admiration was deserved both for the surprising abundance of his work and for its constant perfection[1]. ”
He was the most important portrait painter during the reign of King Louis XIV. His instinct for impressive poses and grand presentations precisely suited the tastes of the royal personages, ambassadors, clerics, courtiers, and financiers who sat for him. Rigaud owes his celebrity to the faithful support he received from the four generations of Bourbons whose portraits he painted. He garnered the core of his clientele among the richest circles as well as among the bourgeois, financiers, nobles, industrialists and government ministers, also courting all the major ambassadors of his time and several European monarchs. His œuvre reads as a near-complete portrait gallery of the chief movers in France from 1680 to 1740. Some of that œuvre (albeit a minority) also includes those of more humble origins - Rigaud's friends, fellow artists or simple businessmen.
Rigaud is inseparable from his best-known work, a 1701 painting of Louis XIV in his coronation costume which today hangs in the Louvre in Paris[2], as well as the second copy also requested by Louis XIV that now hangs at the Palace of Versailles[3]. The exact number of paintings he produced remains in dispute, since he left a highly detailed catalogue but also more than a thousand different models which specialists agree he used[4]. To these may be added the large number of copies in Rigaud's book of accounts, without even mentioning the hundreds of other paintings rediscovered since the accounts' publication in 1919.
The grandson of painter-gilders from Roussillon and the elder brother of another painter (Gaspard), Hyacinthe Rigaud was trained in tailoring in his father's workshop and perfected his skills under Antoine Ranc at Montpellier from 1671 onwards, before moving to Lyon four years later. It was in these cities that he became familiar with Flemish, Dutch and Italian painting, particularly that of Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Titian, whose works he later collected. Arriving in Paris in 1681, he won the prix de Rome in 1682, but on the advice of Charles Le Brun did not make the trip to Rome to which this entitled him. Received into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1700, he rose to the top of this institution before retiring from it in 1735.
Since Rigaud's paintings captured very exact likenesses along with the subject's costumes and background details, his paintings are considered precise records of contemporary fashions. According to the French art historian Louis Hourticq,
“ On his death, Rigaud left behind a gallery of major figures with whom our imagination now populates the galerie des Glaces ; Rigaud was necessary to the 'gloire' of Louis XIV and participated in this shining of a reign whose majesty he fixed [in paint][5]. ”
True "photographs"[6], faces that Diderot called "letters of recommendation written in the common language of all men[7]", Rigaud's works today populate the world's major museums.
Name
Rigaud was born with the Catalan name Jyacintho Rigau or Jacint Rigau i Ros[8] This is variously translated as Híacint Francesc Honrat Mathias Pere Martyr Andreu Joan Rigau[9] -- in Perpignan, which became part of France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (7 November 1659) shortly after his birth.
Family
Tabernacle of the Église de Palau-del-Vidre - 1609 (detail) by Honorat Rigau
Hyacinthe's father, Josep Matias Pere Ramon Rigau, was a tailor (sastre in catalan) in the parish of Saint-Jean de Perpignan, "as well as a painter"[10], descended from a line of well-established artists in the Perpignanian basin who had been commissioned to decorate several tabernacles and other panels for liturgical use. Few of these have survived to the present (Palau-del-Vidre, Perpignan, Montalba-d'Amélie, Joch…). Hyacinthe's grandfather, Jacinto major[n 1], and even more Jacinto's father, Honorat minor[n 2], were heads of the family and the local art world from 1570 to 1630 ; probably as much as gilders as painters[11], since in their studios were to be found "many prints and books treating on the art of painting, and other things, such as brushes and palettes for painting"[12].
Plan of the city of Perpignan in 1642 - A.D.P.O.
Working for the collège Saint-Éloi in his city since 1560, and acting as representative of its guild of painters and gilders, on 22 November 1630 Jacinto major and other gilders and colleagues[n 3] participated in the development of the statutes and minutes of the city's collège Saint-Luc [13]. Honorat minor is generally identified as the painter of The Canonisation of Saint Hyacinthe, formerly in Perpignan's Dominican convent and now at Joch[14], the tabernacle of the church of Palau-del-Vidre (28 March 1609)[n 4] and the retable at Montalba near Amélie-les-Bains. The father of Honorat minor is generally identified as the painter of the retable at Saint-Ferréol (1623) in the église Saint-Jacques de Perpignan and formerly in the couvent des Minimes, whilst Honorat major is usually identified as the painter of the paintings of the retable of the église Saint-Jean-l’Évangéliste at Peyrestortes[15].
On 13 March 1647 Hyacinthe's father Matias Rigau, married Thérèse Faget (1634-1655), daughter of a carpenter[n 5]. Widowed shortly after, he decided to speedily remarry, to Maria Serra, daughter of a Perpignan textile merchant (pentiner in catalan), on 20 December 1655[16]. In 1665, he acquired a house "en lo carrer de las casas cremades" (now rue de l’Incendie, near the cathedral) and received the income from a parcel of vineyards in the Bompas territory[12]. By his second marriage, he also acquired a house on place de l’Huile, but he soon sold it[12].
Life
Perpignan
First training
Rigaud was baptised with his Catalan name in the old cathédrale Saint-Jean de Perpignan on 20 July 1659[10], two days after his birth at rue de la Porte-d’Assaut. He would not have become French had not Roussillon and the Cerdanya been annexed to France the following 7 November thanks to the Treaty of the Pyrenees. That Treaty also put an end to the wars that had taken place between France and Habsburg Spain since 1635 and married king Louis XIV of France to the infanta Maria Theresa of Spain.
Training in Languedoc
Journey to Lyon
Beginnings
Arrival in Paris
In 1682, he was awarded the Prix de Rome.
First commissions
Return to Perpignan
Honours
In 1709, he was made a noble by his hometown of Perpignan. In 1727 he was made a knight of the Order of Saint Michael.
Naturalisation
Salon of 1704
Clientèle
Artists
Rigaud and the court
The Louis XV triptych
The European royal houses
Studio
Collaborators
Personal life
Marriages
Descendents
Fortune
"The French Van Dyck"
Posthumous reputation
Rigaud died in Paris in 1743 at the age of 84.
In 1820, the Musée des beaux-arts Hyacinthe Rigaud in Perpignan, France, was dedicated to him. It is still open to the public and shows some of his work.[17]
Selected works
* Portrait of Graf Philipp Ludwig Wenzel Sinzendorf, 1712, oil on canvas, 166 x 132 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
* Portrait of Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, 1702, oil on canvas, 162 x 150 cm, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles
* Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701, oil on canvas, 279 x 190 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
* ditto, oil on canvas, 238 x 149 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
* ditto, oil on canvas, 1694 (full shot portrait), Musée du Louvre, Paris
* ditto, oil on canvas, 1715 (full shot portrait, "State Portrait"), Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles
* Portrait of the artist's mother, 1695, oil on canvas, 83 x 103 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
* Portrait of Everhard Jabach, 1688, oil on canvas, 58,5 x 47 cm, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
* Studies Of Spaniels And Whippets, And A Study Of A White Headdress, oil on canvas
* Portrait of a Scholar, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
* Portrait of Pierre Imbert Drevet, c. 1700, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm, Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon, France
* Portrait of Louis XV of France at the age 5, wearing the Coronation Robes, 1715, oil on canvas, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles
* Portrait of Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, c. 1719, oil on canvas, Musée national du château de Versailles et des Trianons, Versailles
* Portrait of La comtesse de Selles Marguerite-Henriette de Labriffe , 1712, oil on canvas
* Portrait of Charles Auguste d'Allonville de Louville, Marquis de Louville, 1708, oil on canvas, private collection
* Portrait of Frederick IV of Denmark, Nationalhistoriske Museum, Frederiksborg Palace, Denmark
* Portrait of Sebastien Bourdon, drawing, 1731, 36,1 × 24,9 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main
* Portrait of Louis Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Marquis d'Antin, c. 1710
* Portrait of Augustus II the Strong, oil on canvas, 1715, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
* Portrait of Martin van der Bogaert, drawing, c. 1700, 37,4 × 28,7 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main
* Portrait of a young scholar, drawing, 1685, 31,4 × 25,5 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main
* Portrait of Cardinal Henri Oswald de La Tour d'Auvergne, 1732, oil on canvas, 142 × 113 cm, private collection.
* Portrait of Nicolas Le Camus, drawing, c. 1701, 38,4 × 29,4 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main
References
1. ^ died in 1631. On 25 July 1617, in the église de La Réal in Perpignan, he married Madalena Roat. She was the widow of Pera Roat and on 1 November 1634 remarried in the église Saint-Mathieu in Perpignan, to Antoni Balasco.
2. ^ His year of birth unknown, on 5 July 1617 in the église de La Réal in Perpignan he married Antiga Franch, widow of Antoni Franch
3. ^ Joan Antoni Marti, Guillem Andreu, Thomas Blat et Jaume Fuster
4. ^ 25 ducats were paid to the painter for painting the tabernacle "inside and outside [with] ... good and living and fine colours".
5. ^ Joan Antoni Faget had already died, in 1647. The marriage contract was witnessed before Honoré Sunyer in Perpignan.
1. ^ (French) Jacques Thuillier, professor at the Collège de France, member of the Haut comité des célébrations nationales
2. ^ Paris, musée du Louvre, Inv.7492)
3. ^ Découverte du Château de Versailles : offre culturelle du Château de Versailles
4. ^ (French) Hyacinthe Rigaud - Portrait d'une clientèle
5. ^ (French) Louis Hourticq, De Poussin à Watteau, Paris, 1921
6. ^ Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville 1745, p. 318
7. ^ Jacques Proust, « Diderot et la Physiognomonie », CAIEF, 13, 1961, p.317-319.
8. ^ Catalogne Nord.com. "Catalan Art & The Artists -- Painting". http://www.catalogne-nord.com/ang/artandtheartists2.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
9. ^ there are reportedly other names (sources vary):
different last names at birth: Hyacinthe-François-Honoré-Mathias-Pierre Martyr-André Jean Rigau y Ros, François Hyacinthe Rigaud, Hyacinthe Riguad, and Hiacint Rigau,
different first names at birth: Jyacintho, Francisco, Honorat, Matias, Pere, Martir, Andreu, and Joan
10. ^ a b (Claude Colomer 1973, p. 11)
11. ^ Julien Lugan, Peintres et doreurs en Roussillon aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Canet, éditions Trabucaire, 2006.
12. ^ a b c (Claude Colomer 1973, p. 13)
13. ^ Lugand, op. cit. p. 248.
14. ^ After Marcel Durliat. Cited by Olivier Poisson, "Les Rigau (d)", in Terres Catalanes, n°10, March 1996, p. 54-55.
15. ^ O. Poisson, op. cit., p. 54.
16. ^ (Claude Colomer 1973, p. 12)
17. ^ "Musée des Beaux-Arts Hyacinthe Rigaud". http://www.mairie-perpignan.fr/index.php?np=1&cd=1402#rigaud. Retrieved 2009-01-20.
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