Taking the reader behind the scenes of this elite bastion of French art theory, education, and practice, this engaging study uncovers the fascinating histories - official and unofficial - of that artistic community. 'Académie Royale: A History in Portraits is full of new insights - often brilliant ones - into the world of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Williams' approach to the inner workings of the Academy through close readings of members' portraits and self-portraits is innovative, refreshing and inspired - drawing as it does on anthropological interpretive models, as well as art-historical ones. Original, meticulously researched and elegantly written, this book will be essential reading for specialists in many fields including history, French studies and cultural anthropology, and it will be an indispensable source for historians of eighteenth-century art.' Melissa Hyde, University of Florida, USA 'In her thoughtful and illuminating book, Hannah Williams develops a distinctively new approach to the central institution of the ancien-régime art world.' Emma Barker, French History