Recent studies and exhibitions, combined with the discovery of work by hitherto little-known artists have enabled Merot to take a fresh look at the period and to suggest a new configuration. The great names of the period - Poussin, Vouet, Le Sueur, de La Tour, Mignard - are located in relation to other developments. Merot includes discussion of the impact of contemporary literature and political, philosophical and social influences. The foundation of the Royal Academy of Painting in 1648, and the influence of Mazarin on artistic developments are considered with other issues of status, patronage and connoisseurship. The book provides a panorama of the period; the text is profusely illustrated in colour, and accompanied by a comprehensive bibliography.

The impressive collection of 18th-century French paintings at the National Gallery, London, includes important works by Boucher, Chardin, David, Fragonard, Watteau, and many others. This volume presents over seventy detailed and extensively illustrated entries that expand our understanding of these paintings. Comprehensive research uncovers new information on provenance and on the lives of identified portrait sitters. Humphrey Wine explains the social and political contexts of many of the paintings, and an introductory essay looks at the attitude of 18th-century Britons to the French, as well as the market for 18th-century French paintings then in London salerooms. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press

A beautiful volume that brings to light the forgotten Le Nain brothers, a trio of 17th-century French master painters who specialized in portraiture, religious subjects, and scenes of everyday peasant life In France in the 17th century, the brothers Antoine (c. 1598-1648), Louis (c. 1600/1605-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain painted images of everyday life for which they became posthumously famous. They are celebrated for their depictions of middle-class leisure activities, and particularly for their representations of peasant families, who gaze out at the viewer. The uncompromising naturalism of these compositions, along with their oddly suspended action, imparts a sense of dignity to their subjects. Featuring more than sixty paintings highlighting the artists' full range of production, including altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits, and the poignant images of peasants for which the brothers are best known, this generously illustrated volume presents new research concerning the authorship, dating, and meaning of the works by well-known scholars in the field. Also groundbreaking are the results of a technical study of the paintings, which constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on the Le Nain brothers.

"Since 1957, when Martin Davies published The French School, an unprecedented amount of research has been undertaken on French seventeenth-century artists. Taking account of this, Humphrey Wine has written afresh on the seventeenth-century paintings in Davies's catalogue; he has also written detailed entries on all subsequent acquisitions in this field. These include, as well as paintings by Claude and Poussin, major pictures such as La Hyre's Allegory of Grammar, the Le Nain brothers' Adoration of the Shepherds and Le Sueur's Alexander and his Doctor.".

The Academy and the Limits of Painting in Seventeenth-Century France is the first study in over a century devoted to the creation of one of the most important European institutions of art, the French Académie Royale. Founded in the mid-1660s, the Academy institutionalised the discourse around painting and thus had an immediate impact on the making of art in France, becoming a decisive influence on painting until the close of the nineteenth century. In the process of forging an identity for itself, the Academy redefined almost every aspect of art - the nature of art training, the sources of patronage, the social standing of the artist, and the place of the arts in national life.

"This illustrated book, written by leading scholars and the result of years of research and technical analysis, catalogues nearly one hundred paintings, from works by Francois Clouet in the sixteenth century to paintings by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun in the eighteenth. All these works are explored in detailed, readable entries that will appeal as much to the general art lover as to the specialist." --Book Jacket.