As frequently happens in a study of this kind, I find long lists of the
names of women artists of this period of whose lives and works I find no
record, while the events related in other cases are too trivial for
repetition. This is especially true in Holland, where we find many names
of Dutch women who must have been reputable artists, since they are
mentioned in Art Chronicles of their time; but we know little of their
lives and can mention no pictures executed by them.

* * * * *

A national art now existed in England. Hogarth, who has been called the
Father of English Painting, was a man of too much originality to be a
mere imitator of foreign artists. He devoted his art to the
representation of the follies of his time. As a satirist he was eminent,
but his mirth-provoking pictures had a deeper purpose than that of
amusing. Lord Orford wrote: "Mirth colored his pictures, but benevolence
designed them. He smiled like Socrates, that men might not be offended at
his lectures, and might learn to laugh at their own folly."

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough were born and died in the
eighteenth century; their famous works were contemporary with the
founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, when these artists, together with
Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were among its original members.

It was a fashion in England at this time for women to paint; they
principally affected miniature and water-color pictures, but of the many
who called themselves artists few merit our attention; they practised but
a feeble sort of imitative painting; their works of slight importance
cannot now be named, while their lives were usually commonplace and void
of incident. Of the few exceptions to this rule I have written in the