ABSTRACT
The year 1763, the year of the peace treaty that laid the foundations of the British Empire, is almost the precise point of time when England, for the first time in her history, began to become the Continent's model in matters of art and culture. In France and Germany the English invasion began as early as the sixties of the eighteenth century, and until 1790 hardly anyone thought of seriously disputing its hegemony. From England came the architecture of bare planes and applied ornament, the Greek revival, the Gothic revival and the phenomenon of architectural pluralism. In the phase of the Regence, Rococo and Louis XVI, France had prepared the ground for the revolution. From 1760 to 1790 English influence becomes paramount on the Continent, but it is the French Revolution that draws the ultimate conclusions from English premises.
