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In England. 603 Bran. His principal works are in the cupola of St. Paul's, London, the great hall of Greenwich Hospital, an apart- ment at Hampton Court, a saloon of Blenheim Palace, ceilings, and altar-pieces in the churches at Oxford. George I. knighted him ; nevertheless, Sir James Thornhill, the first English painter who received the honour of knight- hood, would now perhaps have been forgotten, if he had not been — in spite of himself — the father-in-law of Hogarth. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Art, through- out Europe, was in a state of entire decadence. The brilliant schools which had flourished in the seventeenth century in Flanders, Holland and Spain, had no successors in their own countries. Italian art had sunk into the grave with the last of the Bolognese school. Only France at that time possessed a few original artists, who never- theless held but an inferior position. The painters, who appeared at the end of the seven- teenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth, and who were destined to be eclipsed by the true English school, are, amongst others : Jonathan Bichardson (1665 — 1745), pupil and nephew, by marriage, of John Riley, and author, in conjunction with his son, of several works on art; Charles Jervas (1675 — 1739), an Irishman whose style was formed under Kneller, and whom his friend Pope did not hesitate to compare with Zeuxis ; Thomas Hudson (1701 — 1779), the pupil of Bichardson, whose daughter he married, and the master of Beynolds; Francis Hayman (1708 — 1776), the master of Gainsborough; and some others. The National Portrait Gallery includes portraits by many of these painters.