HYACINTHE RIGAUD | PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN, HALF-LENGTH, IN A RED MANTLE

George Encil;

By whom sold, Paris, Drouot, 25 June 1999, lot 56;

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 2 November 2000, lot 193;

There acquired.

V. Prat, Experience and Adventures of a Collector, Tours 1989, pp. 175 and 429 (as Levrac-Tournières);

S. Perreau, Hyacinthe Rigaud: Catalogue concis de l'oeuvre, Languedoc 2013, p. 118, cat. no. P442, reproduced;

A. James-Sarazin, Hyacinthe Rigaud: Catalogue Raisonné, Paris 2016, vol. II, p. 104, cat. no. P.292, reproduced. 

This elegant portrait, which can stylistically be dated to circa 1705, beautifully displays Rigaud's hallmark ability to create realistic depictions of features alongside bravura rendering of material and texture. Dézallier d'Argenville, writing in the following century, noted that "when he (Rigaud) painted velvet, satin, taffeta, fur or lace, one had to touch them to realise they were not the real thing. Wigs and hair, which are so difficult to paint, were but a game for him; the hands in his paintings are particularly divine."¹

The present work is almost certainly the lost picture which is noted on a photograph in the Centre d'étude et de documentation du Musée du Louvre of a copy of the work in the Gil collection. More recently (see Perreau, under Literature), the present work has been published as the prime version with the Gil collection as a sketchier, second version.  

1. Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, Paris 1745-52 and 1762.