Altogether different is the position of their sisters, the women-painters. Let us first look into that of the men. Painters formerly were part of a Guild such as that of the Drapers, Bakers and Butchers, and in their case it was a Guild which was far from occupying the first place in the hierarchy of Guilds. The Butchers were beyond doubt higher up in the scale than the painters. The painters were subjected to narrow and despotic regulations; rigorous conditions governed both apprenticeship and mastership, conditions hardly encouraging to those who had a vocation, more especially in the case of women, ill-protected by the weakness of their sex, by prevalent custom, and ill-adapted for the struggle. The _régime_ of the Académies, which followed that of the Guilds, did not bring in its wake conditions in any degree profitable to womankind. The Académie de Saint-Luc, while pretending to safeguard the professional interests of artists, displayed such tyrannical pretensions that a certain number of artists rose in revolt against it, and appealed to the Royal power, which, approached by its chief painter, Charles Le Brun, came to their rescue, by helping them to found the celebrated Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1666). The Académie Royale proved itself somewhat more liberal. It set no limits to the reception of those who seemed worthy of its suffrages; we know that it welcomed into its bosom a number of strangers of merit, and that it opened its doors to women. Therein lies a victory of appreciable importance, if one considers the energy and the talent which women artists were compelled to display, in order to conquer ancient prejudices in so signal a fashion. Henceforth a place was assigned in art to women, a place still hedged in with limitations, and which could be attained only by the few privileged ones. For, in its turn, the Académie served the purpose of a few, but not that of the many. The Académie reserved the monopoly of exhibitions exclusively for its members; and artists who did not, in one way or other, belong to this congregation, were allowed to exhibit their works in public only once a year. It was on the one day of the Octave of Corpus Christi, for a space of two hours, in the open air, and within the circumference of the Place Dauphine. All great artists had to submit to this treatment, ere they could force the portals of the Académie. But times have changed! Our contemporaries, so inconstant, so impatient, who wear out the attention of the public by the excessive multiplicity of their exhibitory manifestations, should occasionally think of the conditions under which their forerunners laboured.