The "official index" to which I refered is the ARC index of artists and is specifically only for the artists with works displayed on the ARC website. It has never made any pretense at being "all artists" in any general way. The site came up with around 20,000 images and they did a pretty good job of keeping the index up to date until they reached something around 40,000 images.

An original purpose was to provide exposure of classical "realist" artists (with a fairly loose definition of the genre), with particular interest in some more recent ones that seldom get particularly "good press" with the museums. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, in particular, is recognized, but is sort of a "fringe group" relative to the ones of primary interest at the site.

They posted lists of "new acquisitions" that were fairly accurate until about the same time, when it became harder (for me at least) to tell when a "new" image was really new, or when it just replaced an existing one with a "better" one of the same work. There were some updates to the "index of artists at ARC" but that index was provided as a "convenience" for visitors and served little in the way of an essential purpose for the serious students.

Their original target was 60,000 images, possibly based on storage space on the original equipment setup, and when they reached that point the posting of newly acquired images, and indexing what was there, sort of took a back seat to other activities in support of art and artists, although current statistics indicate that they've continued to expand their collection steadily.

For a site that does make an effort to cover "all artists of significance" among the best I've found is ArtCyclopedia that is specifically meant to be an index of (all?) "Fine Art" on the Internet, but only tells you where to find pictures and has none of its own posted. Even there, I find "artists of interest" (to me) that are not in the ArtCyclopedia index, but that may be because we disagree - a little - on what's "fine art" (?), and/or because I don't follow "the trade" closely enough to make popularity judgements. Many of the artists that have seemed to be most popular with 'catters have NOT BEEN LISTED there, possibly because they are living artists who haven't established sufficient reputations with the dealers critics. (The "genealogists" T-shirt currently popular says "You'd be a lot more interesting if you were DEAD." ????)

John