es is added the historical
interest which belongs to them, because they give us the best idea of
court life, dress, and manners of the reign of Louis XIV. which can be had
from any paintings.

The followers of Watteau were numerous, but are not of great importance.
There were a few painters of animals and flowers in the French school; but
we shall pass to the _genre_ painters, among whom JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
(1725-1805) was important. He painted very beautiful pictures of young
girls and children. His color is very agreeable, and some of his works are
finished as finely as if they were done on ivory. Most of his pictures
are in private galleries, but they are seen in some public collections.
Probably the "Broken Jug," in the Louvre, is his best known work. His
pictures sell for very large prices. At the Forster sale in 1876, "A
Little Girl with a Lap Dog in her Arms" brought six thousand seven hundred
and twenty pounds; in 1772 the same picture was sold for three hundred
pounds, and in 1832 it was again sold for seven hundred and three pounds.
Thus we see that in fifty-four years its value had increased to more than
nine times its price, and in one hundred and four years it brought
twenty-two times as much as it was first sold for.

CLAUDE JOSEPH VERNET (1714-1789) was the best marine painter of the French
school. Louis XV. commissioned him to paint the seaports of France.
Fifteen of these pictures are in the Louvre. There have been many
engravings after his works. His pictures of Italian seaports and views
near Rome and Tivoli are among his best paintings. His color has little
variety; but his drawing is correct, and his finish is very careful and
fine. Vernet also made a few etchings.

In the early part of the eighteenth century JOSEPH MARIE VIEN (1716-1809)
returned to the classic style of painting, and created a feeling against
the pretty manner which had been the chief feature of French pictures for
some time. His pictures are very numerous in the churches and galleries of
Paris. He was not a great painter, but he marks a change in the spirit of
French painting. Vien was the teacher of JACQUES LOUIS DAVID (1748-1825),
who was considered the first painter in modern art at the close of the
eighteenth century. He was so devoted to the classic style that he took
the remains of ancient art as models for the figures in his pictures. His
groups are like groups of statues, and his flesh looks like marble, it is
so hard a