page_title: John Francis Rigaud
section_title: London
hierarchical_section_title: John Francis Rigaud / London
caption_attribution_description: Samson breaking his bands or Samson and Delilah
context_page_description: John Francis Rigaud RA was an eighteenth-century history, portrait, and decorative painter. Of French descent, he was born in Turin and spent most of his career in England.
context_section_description: In April 1770, he and Barry travelled together to Florence, Bologna, and Turin. Rigaud then spent a short time in Paris before leaving for London in December 1771. He exhibited his Hercules at the Royal Academy in 1772 and was elected an associate of the Academy in the same year. Also in 1772 he lodged at Mr. Luther's, 20 Frith Street (now no. 25), Soho.
  While Rigaud consistently exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy – showing a total of 155 works there between 1772 and 1815 –  "his most lucrative and engrossing employment was decorative painting for the town and country houses of the nobility, including Lord Gower, Lord Sefton, and the Earl of Aylesford".  Some of his exhibits at the Academy were studies for ceiling paintings, and in 1797 he showed three works described as "specimen[s] of fresco painting on Portland stone. The architect William Chambers offered him work in London at Melbourne House in Piccadilly (1772 and 1774) and at Somerset House (1780). He also helped decorate the common council chamber of the Guildhall in London (1794) and Trinity House (1796). According to the Dictionary of National Biography, all these works were "executed in the fashionable Italian style of G. B. Cipriani and Biagio Rebecca, being mostly classical figures and imitations of bas-reliefs". His works at the Guildhall, representing "Providence", "Innocence", "Wisdom"  and "Happiness" were painted at the expense of Alderman John Boydell. They did not last: a guidebook to the building, published in 1819, recorded that "these Paintings never dried perfectly and turned black. They exist no longer..."
  Rigaud also produced history paintings, such as Entry of the Black Prince into London with his Royal Prisoner (1775), and several works for the galleries of Thomas Macklin and Robert Bowyer, and for the Shakespeare Gallery of John Boydell in the late 1780s. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "his historical paintings were not well received". He was also commissioned to paint two religious works: a Descent from the Cross for the Roman Catholic Sardinian Embassy Chapel in London in 1780 and a fresco of the Ascension for the newly rebuilt church of St Martin Outwich in 1797. This last painting soon fell into a poor condition and was destroyed during alterations to the building in 1827. His "descent from the Cross" painted in 1780 is now visible in the Church of St Anselm and St Cecilia which was built after the destruction of the Sardinian Embassy Chapel during the Gordon riots.
  Rigaud was also a portrait painter, and painted a group portrait of the artists Francesco Bartolozzi, Agostino Carlini, and Giovanni Battista Cipriani in 1777 and another of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Chambers, and Joseph Wilton in 1782. He also painted a series of naval heroes, including Lord Nelson. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, his portraits "tend to be strongly characterized and boldly conceived, even occasionally eccentric".
  On 10 February 1784 Rigaud was formally elected to the Royal Society, with Samson Breaking his Bands as his diploma work. In 1795, he was appointed historical painter to Gustavus IV of Sweden and was made a member of the Royal Academy of Stockholm. However, after 1800, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, his career as a painter seems to have declined. He translated Leonardo da Vinci's  A Treatise on Painting (1802) and he restored painted decorations such as those in Greenwich Hospital and Montague House.
caption: Samson Breaking his Bands (1784)
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