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Portrait of Cardinal Guillaume Dubois
Also known as: Cardinal Guillaume Dubois; Portrait of Cardinal Dubois
About the Artwork
With his luxurious, flamboyant dress—a voluminous wrap of scarlet silk topped by a short fur cape—the subject of Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portrait was clearly a man of consequence. Guillaume Dubois gained the favor of Louis XIV as tutor to his nephew, Philippe Charles, Duke of Orléans, and served as chief minister under Louis’s successors, the regent Duke of Orléans and Louis’s great-grandson, Louis XV. Dubois was appointed a Cardinal in the Catholic Church in 1721, a lofty aspiration at least partly motivated by political ambition: the title gave him the ability to remove political adversaries with impunity. Dubois holds a letter with the words Au Roy (to the king); this portrait was painted in the same year the young Louis XV ascended to the throne.
Inscriptions
signed on base of clock: fait par Hyacinthus Rigaud, 1723
Provenance
1967-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1956-1957: (Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1956: (Hôtel Drouot, sale, Dec. 10, 1956, lot Q, sold to Wildenstein & Co.)1 1907: Edouard Kann, Berlin1 1905-1907: (Duveen Brothers, Paris, sold to Edouard Kann)1 By 1900-1907: Rodolphe Kann, Paris, collection purchased by the Duveen Brothers (Possibly P. & D. Colnaghi, London) 1 1892: (Sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, May 21, 1892, no. 68, possibly sold to P. & D. Colnaghi)1 -1845: George Francis Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont [1786 – 1845] by 1764: Mlle. Violat (heiress of Cardinal Dubois), Chateau de Villemenon, near Brie-Comte-Robert 1
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967). The Age of Louis XV: French Painting, 1710 - 1774. The Toledo Museum of Art (organizer) (October 26-December 7, 1975); The Art Institute of Chicago (January 10-February 22, 1976); National Gallery of Canada (March 21-May 2, 1976). Portraiture: The Image of the Individual. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 22, 1983-January 22, 1984). Opulent Fashion in the Church. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 19, 2016-October 2, 2017). Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) or the Sun Portrait. Musée National de Château de Versailles, 78 008 Versailles cedex, France (organizer) (May 19-June 13, 2021) http://en.chateauversailles.fr/news/exhibitions/hyacinthe-rigaud-sun-portrait.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Hyacinthe Rigaud (French, 1659–1743)
- Date
- 1723
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 180.5 x 148 x 15 cm (71 1/16 x 58 1/4 x 5 7/8 in.); Unframed: 146.7 x 113.7 cm (57 3/4 x 44 3/4 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1967.17
More by Hyacinthe Rigaud in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009223
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