Gabriel Bernard de Rieux
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Gabriel Bernard, comte de Rieux (1687-13 December 1745), baron and lord of Livinière, was a member of the French parliament. He was known as président de Rieux.
Younger son of the famous financier Samuel Bernard and his first wife, Madeleine Clergeau, he began a career as a judge. He became substitute for the procurator general to the Parliament of Paris, counsellor to the same Parliament (from 31 August 1714), president of the Second Chamber of Enquiries to that Parliament, president of the Chambre des comptes (from 7 January 1727). He died in office.
When his father died in 1739 he inherited his hôtel particulier on rue Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris, along with the estate and lordship of Glisolles [1] He bought the château de Passy from Manon Dancourt on 18 March 1739 and lived there until his death, continuing his father's tradition of hospitality.[2] He founded a boys' school and a girls' school in his lordship of Passy. He bore the title of count of Rieux, an estate his father had received in payment of a debt.
Family portraits
In 1738 he commissioned a pastel from Maurice-Quentin de La Tour of his niece Marie Louise Gabrielle de La Fontaine Solare, who in 1743 became marquise de Sesmaisons.[3] This measured 0,53 m by 0,61 m and was exhibited at the 1738 Salon. It was owned by de Rieux's descendents until 1918 and entered the Louvre collection in 2014.[4]
In 1739, he commissioned a portrait of himself from the same artist, who produced it as a large format (2,00 m. x 1,50 m.) pastel showing him seated in the costume of the President of the Parliament of Paris. The finished work was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1741 and is considered as one of the artist's masterpieces.[5][6]
de La Tour also produced a smaller (1,16 x 0,90 m.) portrait of de Rieux's wife in a ballgown holding a mask, exhibited at the 1742 Salon and now in the musée Cognacq-Jay.[7][8]
