READINGS OF GUSTAVE COURBET MARK EDWIN SOUNESS A ...

Acknowledgements
I should like to acknowledge the support and assistance of numerous individuals and
institutions without which this thesis could not have been undertaken or completed. The
thesis progressed in a programme of research funded by the University of Hertfordshire and
I benefited greatly from the financial assistance, project supervision and personal academic
development afforded by this programme. The encouragement and advice of Brendan
Larvor in the early stages of the project have been much appreciated. The research has
benefited from the input and consideration of numerous academic members of staff in
seminars and discussions conducted in the Department of Art and Arts Therapies at the
University of Hertfordshire and I am grateful for this support. I am also indebted to the
Research Committee of the University of Hertfordshire for its patience concerning some
unavoidable delays that posed a serious threat to the project for a while. Thanks are also
due to various libraries and archives in England and in France for the use of their research
facilities. In particular, I should like to thank the staff at the Bibliothèque nationale de
France in Paris for helping me locate some elusive sources and Trinity College Cambridge
for providing me with a research base in the early stages of the project. The British Library
in London has been a mainstay for my research and I have also benefited from the
collections held at the History of Art department at the University of Oxford. Some of the
ideas within the thesis were tested and rehearsed at a conference held by the Association of
Art Historians in Edinburgh in 2000 and I should like to thank all those who contributed
ideas and comments, particularly John House, who offered inspiring thoughts and helped
direct some important aspects of the thesis. I would like to extend a special note of thanks
to the Open University for assisting me with numerous grants from the Crowther Fund and
for giving me considerable moral support during the project even though I had not studied
with the university for a number of years. Most especially, however, I wish to express my
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