Autoportrait

18 luglio 1659

Born

1671

Sent to Montpellier to study painting

Rigaud trained as a tailor in his father's workshop, but in 1671, after his father's death, he was sent to Montpellier to learn painting under Antoine Ranc.

1681

Moves to Paris

By then Rigaud had built a good reputation among his Lyon clients, from Switzerland to Aix-en-Provence. He came to Paris to perfect his skills and to see the work of the artists of the famous Academy that Louis XIV had founded early in his reign.

1682

Declines the journey to Rome on Le Brun's advice

Having won the Prix de Rome, Rigaud did not go to Rome, on the advice of Charles Le Brun, First Painter to the King. Le Brun admired the young Catalan's work and talked him out of the journey so that he could give himself wholly to portraiture — a more lucrative genre than history painting, which the Academy nonetheless held to be nobler. For the next half-century Rigaud painted almost nothing but portraits and won renown as the “French Van Dyck”.

1688

Commissions from the court of Versailles

At first sought after by the third estate, from 1688 Rigaud worked on commissions from the court of Versailles. Later the future Louis XV received three formal portraits from him in succession, and for the third the painter asked an unprecedented 15,000 livres.

1700

Elected to the Royal Academy

An associate member of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture since 1684, Rigaud was elected a full academician in 1700 for a portrait of M. de la Chapelle submitted to the committee. Other accounts date this to 1710.