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 _Anecdotes of Painting in England_." As Walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of George Vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of the English school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have been effected by Reynolds. But as Wren's Cathedral replaced an older one which was destroyed by the fire of London, and as that was reared on the foundation of a Roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in England was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be found.