Nicolas de Largillière

Nicolas de Largillière learned his trade far from the French court that most ambitious painters chased. He grew up in Antwerp, steeped in the rich colour and loaded brush of the Flemish masters, then spent the late 1670s in England assisting Peter Lely, the leading portraitist of the Restoration court in London. He was about 23 when he settled in Paris in 1679.

There he built a career on the clientele the crown painters overlooked. His near-exact contemporary Hyacinthe Rigaud took the kings and dukes. Largillière painted the wealthy Parisian middle class, the magistrates and merchants and their families, dressing them in silks and settings as grand as any aristocrat's. The two men were friends and rarely chased the same sitter.

One of his largest works was a public commission. The city of Paris asked him for a votive picture of its provost and aldermen kneeling before Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, whose shrine was carried through the streets in times of drought or plague. He was showered with honours, became chancellor of the Royal Academy in 1743, and kept working into extreme old age. He died in Paris in 1746, at 89, having outlived nearly every painter of his own generation.