William Crary Brownell (1851 1928) was an American literary and art critic. After graduating from Amherst College he worked for the New York World and for Charles Schribners and Sons. French Art, published in 1892, covered classic and contemporary painting and sculpture. Brownell begins More than that of any other modern people French art is a national expression. It epitomizes very definitely the national aesthetic judgment and feeling, and if its manifestations are even more varied than are elsewhere to be met with, they share a certain character that is very salient. Of almost any French picture or statue of any modern epoch one's first thought is that it is French. The national quite overshadows the personal quality. In the field of the fine arts, as in nearly every other in which the French genius shows itself, the results are evident of an intellectual co-operation which insures the development of a common standard and tends to subordinate idiosyncrasy.