RIGAUD, HYACINTHE (1659-1743), French painter, born at Perpignan 20th July 1659, was the descendant of a line of painters. Having early lost his father, he was sent by his mother to Montpellier, where he studied under Pezet and was helped by Ranc, then to Lyons, and in 1681 to Paris. There, whilst following the regular course of academical instruction, Rigaud produced a great number of portraits so good that Lebrun advised him to give up going to Rome and to devote himself wholly to this class of work. Rigaud, although he had obtained the Great Prize, -followed this advice, and for sixty-two years painted at the rate of thirty to forty portraits a year, all carried through with infinite care by his own hand. He had a, magnificent emphatic manlier appropriate to the rendering of the pompous types of the age, but, although some of his most famous works belong to the class of official portraiture, his talent showed to even greater advanta.ge iu the painting of subjects whose life and position admitted of less formal treatment. His portraits of himself, of the sculptor Des-jardins (Louvre), of Mignarcl, and of Lebrun (Louvre) may-be cited as triumphs of a still more attmctive, if less impos-ing, character than that displayed in his grand repre-sentations of Bossuet (Louvre) and Louis XIV. (Louvre). while his beautiful portraits of his mother, Marie Serre (Louvre), must for ever remain amongst the masterpieces of Frenci art. Rigaud, although the great successes to which he owed his fame were won without exception in portrait painting, persisted in pressing the Academy to admit him as an historical painter. This delayed his reception, and it was not until January 2, J700, that he succeeded in obtaining his desire. He presented as his diploma works a St Andrew (Louvre) and the portrait of Desjardins already mentioned, exhibited at the salon of 1704, and filled in turn all the various posts of academical distinction. Having attained a professional position of unsurpassed eminence, Rigaud died at the age of eighty-four on 27th December 1713, having never recovered from the shock of losing his wife in the year previous. He had many pupils, and his numerous works had the good fortune to be reproduced by the greatest of French engravers - Edelinck, Drevet, Wille, Audran, and others.