eror
Napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the Government,
and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great
influence on the whole course of French painting for many years to come.
But the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this
revolutioniser went for inspiration. The explanation is to be found in
the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the Academy
to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of
Brutus synchronising with the events of 1789. He was at once hailed as a
deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the Revolution.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--FRAGONARD

L'ETUDE

_Louvre, Paris_]

But what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this
time was his actual appointment as President of the Convention, which
gave him the power to revenge himself upon the Academy, which he did by
extinguishing it in 1793, and to remove any inconvenient rivals by
indicting them as aristocrats. Of the older painters, Fragonard and
Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under
the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical
David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting
for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in
the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved. Unfortunately he
attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected
from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and
was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of
David was supreme. How it was finally overthrown we shall see in another
chapter.

_THE ENGLISH SCHOOL_

I

THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS

In the preface to the _Anecdotes of Painting_ written in 1762, Horace
Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on
the works of its painters. "In truth," he continues, "it has very rarely
given birth to a genius in that profession. Flanders and Holland have
sent us the greatest men that we can boast. This very circumstance may
with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of
which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so
few good artists. This objection is so striking, that instead of calling
it _The Lives of English Painters_, I have simply given it the title of