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| The Ten American Painters | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Ten American Painters |
| Formation | 1898 |
| Dissolution | 1919 |
| Purpose | Exhibition of American Impressionist painting |
| Location | New York City, United States |
| Founders | Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, John Henry Twachtman |
| Notable members | Edward Bannister (note: not a member), Frank Weston Benson, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam |
The Ten American Painters were an artist group formed in 1898 by leading American painters who seceded from the Society of American Artists to exhibit Impressionist work independently. The group, active into the 1910s, included figures who had exhibited in venues such as the National Academy of Design, the Boston Art Club, and the Paris Salon, and who had trained at institutions like the Académie Julian and the Art Students League of New York. Their annual exhibitions in New York City and tours of Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia helped define American responses to Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro.
Members split from the Society of American Artists and the mainstream represented by the National Academy of Design after debates over juried exhibitions that involved figures associated with the American Watercolor Society, the Boston Art Club, and conservative jurists such as Thomas Dewing and Daniel Huntington. Influences included study in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts, exposure to the Paris Salon, and interactions with expatriate networks around Giverny and the circles of Mary Cassatt and James McNeill Whistler. The schism reflected tensions between proponents of plein air practice inspired by John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and adherents of academic traditions championed at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
The membership roster featured prominent American painters who were central to late 19th- and early 20th-century painting: Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Willard Metcalf, J. Alden Weir, Frank Weston Benson, Theodore Robinson, Robert Reid, Edward Charles Volkert, and Louis Kronberg. These artists had links to institutions and personalities including the Art Students League of New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and patrons such as Samuel Putnam Avery and Isabella Stewart Gardner. Many corresponded with or were critiqued by writers and historians like Lyman Beecher Starr, Samuel T. Williamson, William C. Brownell, and collectors in the circles of Henry Clay Frick, J. P. Morgan, and Charles Lang Freer.
The group's painting emphasized plein air technique, broken color, and an interest in light and atmosphere derived from Impressionism as practiced by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro. They painted coastal scenes in Cape Cod, Narragansett Bay, Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Giverny-influenced gardens, portraiture linked to commissions from patrons like August Belmont and John Jacob Astor IV, and interiors recalling the work of James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. The painters balanced influences from the Barbizon school—notably Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet—with American subjects such as Hudson River School vistas and New England domesticity represented by Winslow Homer and Asher B. Durand.
The Ten organized annual exhibitions that bypassed juried selection at the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, choosing instead gallery displays in spaces associated with dealers and patrons like Paul Durand-Ruel, William Macbeth, M. Knoedler & Co., and the St. Botolph Club. Critics from publications including The New York Times, The Century Magazine, Harper's Weekly, Scribner's Magazine, and art critics such as William M. Chase (as a participant and commentator), A. Oakey Hall and Charles H. Caffin debated their merits. Responses ranged from praise by modernist advocates influenced by Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Henri to skepticism from conservative voices aligned with the Art Commission of New York and collectors favoring Academic art.
The group's activities shaped acceptance of American Impressionism in museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and regional institutions like the High Museum of Art and the Worcester Art Museum. Their influence extended to later movements and artists connected to the Ashcan School, Modernism advocates such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, and collectors like Dr. Samuel D. Gross and Joan Whitney Payson who built nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American painting collections. Retrospectives and scholarship have appeared in exhibitions curated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Terra Museum of American Art, and publications from historians such as Barbara Novak and William H. Gerdts, cementing the group's role in the narrative linking Hudson River School antecedents to American modern art.
Category:American artist groups Category:American Impressionism