It was actually the French academy that awarded the French scholarship for art students called the Prix de Rome. The award allowed the recipients to stay in Rome from three to five years and all of their expanses were covered by the state.The award was abolished in 1968.
This is called a "topic sentence." It's common for paragraphs to have the main idea be the first sentence, because this allows the author to set up the rest of the paragraph and explain things immediately after the topic sentence.
