Excerpt from James Ward, R. A<br><br>He was born in 1769, the year of the foundation of the Royal Academy, just at the time that English art was casting off leading strings, and establishing itself on a firm footing. Hogarth was but five years dead. Hudson and Ramsey were still fashionable portrait painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough had barely reached their prime, Romney was courting fame as an historical painter preparatory to his journey to Italy, and Stubbs was gaining larger sums by his canvasses and enamels of horses, than most of his brother artists could earn by painting portraits of men and women.<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.