John Francis Rigaud

John Francis Rigaud (1742 - 1810) was an eighteenth-century history, portrait, and decorative painter. While Rigaud consistently exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy, "his most lucrative and engrossing employment was decorative painting for the town and country houses of the nobility". The architect William Chambers offered him work in London at Melbourne' House in Piccadilly (1772 and 1774) and Somerset House (1780). He also helped decorate the common council chamber of the Guildhall in London (1794) and for Trinity House (1796). He was also the painter of the German naturalists on Cook's Second Voyage 'Johann Reinhold Forster and Georg Forster in Tahiti' in 1780. Dance was an architect, draughtsman and founder member of the Royal Academy. This portrait comes from a series of chalk portraits that he did of his friends, 72 of which were engraved and published (1808-1814) by Daniell who was an engraver as well as a reknown landscape painter. Accompanied by original descriptive text.