The Goncourt brothers, Edmond (1822-96) and Jules (1930-70), were novelists, art critics and collectors. As contemporaries of Flaubert and Zola, they achieved a reputation as exponents of realism in the novel, but their lasting fame rests on their Journal and on their series of monographs on French eighteenth-century painters. In this volume, six of their most attractive essays are presented, dealing with Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, La Tour, Greuze and Fragonard. The Goncourts were passionate collectors, and their writing still conveys their enthusiasm, excitement and deep love of their subjects: so potent was their haunting evocation of Watteau's art that it has continued to influence the interpretation of his work to this day. At the same time they had real taste, and their judgements are perceptive and penetrating. They were also zealous documentary researchers. As historians they sought the same detailed realism which they cultivated as novelists, and their work remains a basic documentary source-book, with a selection of original sources printed at the end of each essay.