however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and
though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise
their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that
most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many
of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said
in our own country--but among them was SEBASTIEN BOURDON (1616-1671),
whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also,
wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of
the Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed
principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in
1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting
landscapes, and historical subjects. _The Return of the Ark from
Captivity_, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by
that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it
was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most
treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the
fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without
mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the
poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is
_Jacob's Dream_, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, _The Return of the Ark
from Captivity_, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those
histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style
of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur
and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear
by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no
very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic
ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have
little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those
subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a
correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the
scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without
feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the
painters."

EUSTACHE LE SUEUR, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616),
was another of the original members of the Academy, and was employed by
the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the
cloister at the monastery of