Though he painted portraits for the crown heads of Europe, Nicolas de Largillière hated official commissions. 

The haute bourgeoisie (filthy rich middle class) paid better and more quickly, and were easier to please. Unlike the prestigious but often impoverished nobility, these were people with plenty of money and plenty to prove. Consequently, he painted his sitters with more big hair and bling than you’d see at a Beverly Hills bar mitzvah circa 1986.

He was educated among the Dutch masters of Antwerp before moving to England where he became an assistant in Sir Peter Lely’s studio. He found favor with the courts of Kings Charles II and James II, but fled England for France, fearing anti-Catholic discrimination. Largillière was more at home amongst his Catholic, rococo-loving countrymen...especially the fabulously wealthy Parisians for whom there was no such thing as "too much." Indeed, with the plethora of lapdogs, parrots, peacocks, exotic animal pelts, enslaved African children, cherubs, gilded furniture, brocaded drapes, enormous vases and gaudy statues that appear in his portraits…finding the sitter among their material possessions can seem a little bit like looking for Waldo in a Persian furniture store.

Toward the end of his life, Largillière turned away from the excess of his rococo past and gravitated toward religious paintings and more subdued subjects, such as portraits of nuns and the philosopher Voltaire. He became director of the Royal Academy, and produced as many as 1,500 portraits in his lifetime, proving that flattering the egos of rich people is never a bad career move.