Excerpt from A History of French Painting: From Its Earliest to Its Latest Practice, Including an Account of the French Academy of Painting, Its Salons Schools of Instruction of Instruction and Regulations; With Reproductions of Sixteen Representative Paintings<br><br>A word in defence of lists, in appearance so sterile, in fact so fer tile of information. A list of an artist's works, with dates, often times is evidence of his growth in art and life, an account of what he was and is, an implication of what he is not. They, therefore, are a concise method of giving much, especially if well based on prelimi nary sketches or discriminated classification. Greater space, then would have led to more and fuller lists. The thinking world is becoming more and more fond of drawing its own inferences from pure facts. An age that strenuously demands details in its art equally requires details of its art. Since it is a well-known fact that many artists of France, who have never won an honor at the Salons, are nevertheless rewarded by an exalted public estimate, the rank is apparent of even the least of those mentioned in the lists under the various classes, all of whom have been medalled, most to the degree of being Hors Concours, some of whom have been members of the Institute, and an occasional one a Minister of the Fine Arts. And not the least service of these statistics is their demonstration of the great wealth of French painting.<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.