Tracing the careers of students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries necessarily involves consulting numerous, scattered and partial archives. By publishing the Ecole des Beaux-Arts register (1813-1968) in digital format, Alice Thomine-Berrada, Déborah Laks, Lucie Lachenal and France Nerlich have confronted themselves with the arid data of administrative archives, far removed from the contrasting, lively, singular experience of those who, at some point in their youth, wished to commit themselves to the path of art.