Discours sur l'origine, les progrès et l'état actuel de la peinture en France : contenant des notices sur les principaux artistes de l'Académie : pour servir d'introduction au Sallon
A French treatise of 1785 published in Paris by booksellers of new publications, issued under the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as an introduction to that year's Salon, surveying French painting and its leading academicians. The three pictures are decorative printed ornaments, a vignette and a border, with no figures or scenes from the text itself. A designer could draw on their 18th-century neoclassical motifs: urns, garlands, astronomical emblems and repeating lozenge borders.


