Excerpt from French Pictures and Their Painters<br><br>We find that the artists of the various centuries were the real historians. Sometimes these artists were big enough to picture underlying motives that brought about a revolution. Or constructed a republic; then again the artists simply reflected the surface life of the time, but both have given invaluable material from which to construct a vivid word picture of each period of the time. The more familiar we can become with French pictures given us by painters who were living witnesses of the scenes, the closer we will come to that glorious nation whose people have indeed come up through tribulation.<br><br>As we proceed from century to century in studying the events and peoples portrayed by French painters, we find that we too become inti mately associated with France. And to know France and her history through pictures is to know more about our own country and the men and women who brought it into being.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.