Excerpt from Thomas Gainsborough<br><br>From the days when Holbein landed here with a letter from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, down to the time when Van Dyck accepted, about one hundred years later, the invitation of Charles I. To visit his Court, all portraiture bore traces of the Teutonic manner. Before Van Dyck arrived, such men as Paul Van Somer, Cornelius Janssen, and Daniel Mytens had been continuing the traditions of the Germanic school in their portraiture; but the great Fleming, with the consummate artistiy of his brush, soon swept all this away, and from his time painting in England made a fresh departure.<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.