Ten American Painters

Thus, the National Academy of Design (founded in 1825 by students dissatisfied by the conservatism of the older American Academy of the Fine Arts) eventually became too conservative to suit the artists who in 1877 initiated the Society of American Artists so they could meet and exhibit their work as a collective.

The Ten American Painters was born from this group in 1898, when Twachtman, Weir, and Hassam found the Society hostile to the Impressionist style they had adopted.

Impressionism was a French art movement that emerged in the 1870s, and was picked up by American painters towards the end of the 19th century.

Painters like Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir are generally considered the masters of the impressionist movement.

[2] The founding members of The Ten were Frank W. Benson, Joseph Rodefer DeCamp, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Childe Hassam, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Robert Reid, Edward Simmons, Edmund C. Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir.