Haitian naive painter, born into a poor family in Port-au-Prince. He was encouraged by Hector Hyppolite, who was a neighbour, and in 1946 he began studying at the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince; this had been established two years earlier by the American teacher DeWitt Peters (1902–66) as a place where artists could attend classes and exhibit their work. Bigaud rapidly established a reputation as an artist of outstanding talent, hailed as the ‘Raphael’ of Haitian painting because of the limpid beauty of his work, in which he combined lush detail with clarity of design. His output included portraits and everyday life scenes, as well as religious subjects (both Christian and Voodoo).