RIGAUD, John Francis

French painter, active in England. He studied in Turin, Florence and Bologna, and lived in Rome for two years from 1768. In 1771 he settled in London, becoming in the following year an Associate of the Royal Academy, and a full Academician in 1784.

He received a steady stream of commissions for historical subjects, as well as decorative compositions and portraits. In 1775 he exhibited the Entry of the Black Prince into London with his Royal Prisoner (untraced); its subject from national history was an original choice for the time. From 1778 he painted for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery such small pictures as Scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (untraced). He also contributed to Macklin’s Poets’ Gallery.

In 1794 he won what was probably his most important commission, the decoration of the four pendentives of the Common Council Chamber in the Guildhall, London, depicting Providence, Innocence, Wisdom and Happiness; of these only the preparatory oil sketches survive (London, Guildhall Art Gallery).

Rigaud’s most important patron was Heneage Finch, 4th Earl of Aylesford, who employed him to decorate the Pompeian Gallery at Packington Hall, Warwicks, in 1787 and the New Church in 1787 and 1792. Rigaud was one of the major painters of large-scale decorative schemes for fashionable interiors of the late 18th century. His early designs were Neo-classical in feeling, but his later work tended more towards the Baroque. His narrative pictures range from history subjects in the Grand Manner, which he painted principally for the theme galleries, to popular sentimental subjects intended for the print market. As a portrait artist, he could be frank and expressive when not seeking heroic effects; his best portraits are of fellow artists such as that of Joseph Nollekens (1772; Yale Center of British Art, New Haven) and a half-length group of his fellow Academicians, Sir William Chambers, Joseph Wilton and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1782; National Portrait Gallery, London).