The two great portrait painters who flourished under the “Grand
Monarque,” Rigaud and Largillière, were preceded by an artist to whom,
perhaps owing to the relative scarceness of his works, history has
done but scant justice. Whilst the Louvre contains thirteen portraits
by Largillière and seventeen by Rigaud, only two pictures stand to the
name of Claude Lefebvre (1632-1675); but his _Portraits of a Master
and his Pupil_ (No. 529) and the _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 530), are
distinguished by a penetrating insight into character and an incisive
vigour of style that form a striking contrast to the shallow bombast
introduced even into portraiture by the fashionable painters to the
Court. Lefebvre has been compared with Van Dyck. The _Portrait of a
Man_ (No. 530) has more in common with the brilliant audacity of Frans
Hals’s brushwork. Lefebvre worked for some years in London, where he
was a favourite at the Court of Charles II.
Rigaud’s manner of portraiture has none of these serious, manly
qualities, but his skill in arranging the sumptuous accessories which
play so important a part in his portraits,—as important, at least,
as the actual features of the sitters,—secured him the patronage of
the pomp-loving, haughty nobility. Hyacinthe Rigaud y Ros (1659-1743)
was born at Perpignan and educated at Montpellier and Lyons. It was
the advice of Le Brun that saved him from the customary pilgrimage to
Rome and its inevitable consequences. It was Le Brun who recognised
Rigaud’s bent for portraiture, and launched him on the brilliant
career which gained for him the title of “the French Van Dyck.” Rigaud
was enormously productive. Between 1681 and 1698 he is said to have
painted six hundred and twenty-three portraits. And he had then another
forty-five years before him!
Rigaud’s best known picture at the Louvre is the stately _portrait
d’apparat_ of _King Louis XIV._ (No. 781), a life-size full length,
in which the spirit of the time, the curious blending of supercilious
haughtiness, love of display, and affected grace of manner, are
happily expressed in the monarch’s attitude and in the whole setting.
The picture is signed and dated, “PEINT PAR HYACINTHE RIGAUD, 1701.”
The same tendencies are to be noted in the full length _Portrait of
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux_ (No. 783), in which it is surprising that
the prelate’s personality is not completely smothered by the splendid
profusion of the accessories. His gifts appear, however, in a better
light in his excellent _Portraits of Marie Serre, the Artist’s Mother_
(No. 784), with the same head, honestly and soberly painted, twice on
the same canvas, once in sharp profile looking to the right, and again,
facing this, a three-quarter profile to the left. Wholly unexpected
is the delicacy and softness of one of his pictures in the La Caze
Room: the _Portrait of the Duke of Lesdiguières as a Child_ (No. 792).
His solitary excursion into the domain of “grand art” at the Louvre
is at the same time his last work: _The Presentation in the Temple_
(No. 780), which in grouping and lighting owes much to the study of
Rembrandt.
Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) was born in Paris, but was taken
when still an infant to Antwerp, where he became a pupil of Goebouw.
From 1674 to 1680 he worked in London as an assistant of Sir Peter
Lely, from whom he acquired the clever tricks and mannerisms in the
painting of draperies and the textures of silks and velvets and other
materials, which were to form so important a part of his artistic
equipment. After Lely’s death Largillière went to Paris, where he not
only shared with Rigaud the patronage of the Court as portrait painter,
but secured many important commissions for historical paintings which,
perhaps to the advantage of his fame, are now all but forgotten.
Largillière was not without distinction as a brilliant and daring
colourist. Nor was he incapable, on occasion, of seizing the subtleties
of his sitters’ character. But his praiseworthy qualities are more than
balanced by his unpleasant affectations and by the baroque squirminess
of his line. This tendency carried him to such insufferable excesses as
the conglomeration of lumpy bosses which does duty for a hand in his
_Portrait of M. Du Vaucel_ (No. 484), in the La Caze Room.
His boastful skill in the management of the satins and velvets in the
overrated portrait group of _Largillière with his Wife and Daughter
in a Garden_ (No. 491), cannot atone for the singularly unfortunate
and clumsy composition, and for the self-conscious affectation of each
individual pose. More satisfactory, in spite of the superabundance of
accessories and outward pomp, which in this case is a fitting attribute
to the character of the sitter, is the _Portrait of Charles Le Brun,
First Painter to King Louis XIV._ (No. 482), who is depicted in a
colossal wig, seated before an easel, and wearing a superbly painted
red velvet cloak.