The approach of the great national crisis, and even the worst days of that period, at the same time glorious yet barbaric, did not extinguish the zeal of the women painters. It seems rather as though they shut themselves up in the study of their art so as to secure a refuge for their hopes and their dreams. In the first "Salons" of the century, one is surprised to find works by a comparatively large number of women painters. In 1800, of 180 exhibitors they number 25; eight years later, in the "Salon" of 1808, they are 46 out of 311. The difficulties set up by the Academy were overcome, the liberty to exhibit was a fresh encouragement, even an exceptional stimulus. The figures, therefore, rise still further in the first quarter of the century, so that in 1831 the women number 149 out of 873 exhibitors. The "staff," so to speak, of the women artists of that day, surrounding Mme. Vigée Le Brun, whose glorious and somewhat chequered career did not close till 1842, included a number of distinguished women, such as Mlle. Bevic and Mlle. Capet, pupils of Mme. Guyard; Mme. Chaudet, the wife of the sculptor; Mlle. Eulalie Morin; Mme. Adèle Romance, who also signed Romany, or Romany de Romance; the "good" Mlle. Godefroid, pupil of Baron Gérard, who helped him in so many of the portraits of contemporary cosmopolitan people of distinction, commissions for which rained in the master's studio, after the entry of the allied forces into Paris. Later on, we have Mlle. Cogniet; Mme. Filleul; Mme. Rude, the wife of the great sculptor, who had a severe yet confident talent. Lastly, there was the woman artist who benefited by all the advantages of fashion, Mme. Haudebourt-Lescot. [Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL, 1755-1842 MADAME VIGÉE LE BRUN AND HER DAUGHTER. AFTER THE PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLÉMENT & CO., PARIS Madame Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Painter 1755-1842] Mlle. Lescot, wife of Haudebourt, the architect, and pupil of Lethière--mischievous tongues, of course, declared that he painted her pictures--was a strange creature, who, at the start, owed the popularity she obtained as much to her personal charm as to her real talent. Her first success was in the drawing-room, where people admired her dances. "She was," says a writer, "ugly and captivating, with crooked eyes and a charming expression, her mouth ill-shaped, but tender and inviting," such as Ingres represented her in one of his finest pencil drawings.