_Hyacinthe Rigaud_ (French: 1659-1743).
Rigaud was a native of Perpignan, and the son and grandson
of a painter. In 1681 he went up to Paris, and following
the advice of Le Brun devoted himself to portraiture. He
studied diligently the works of Van Dyck, whose disciple
he always professed to be. He rapidly obtained fame as a
portrait-painter, but it was not till 1700--on the completion
of his "St. Andrew" now in the Louvre--that he was admitted as
an historical painter into the Academy. He held various offices
in that body, and painted all the great men of his day. His own
portrait by himself is in the Uffizi.
A portrait of the famous tutor, and afterwards prime minister, of Louis
XV. It is eminently the "pacific Fleury," who strove to keep France
out of war and starved her army and navy when she was forced into it,
that we see in this amiable old gentleman--the scholar and member
of the Academy, who completed what is now the National Library of
France--rather than the statesman. A similar picture is in the Wallace
Collection (No. 130).