The Ten American Painters, generally known as The Ten, resigned from the Society of American Artists

Society of American Artists

The Society of American Artists was an American artists group. It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately meet their needs, and was too conservative....

 in late 1897 to protest the commercialism of that group's exhibitions, and their circus-like atmosphere. The Society had broken away from the National Academy of Design

National Academy of Design

The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, founded in New York City as the National Academy of Design – known simply as the "National Academy" – is an honorary association of American artists founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E...

 in New York City twenty years earlier, in a progressive movement led by Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

, John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...

, James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...

, and Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

.

The Ten were Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam

Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...

, J. Alden Weir

J. Alden Weir

Julian Alden Weir was an American impressionist painter and member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich, Connecticut...

, John Henry Twachtman

John Henry Twachtman

John Henry Twachtman was an American painter best known for his impressionist landscapes, though his painting style varied widely through his career. Art historians consider Twachtman's style of American Impressionism to be among the more personal and experimental of his generation...

, Robert Reid

Robert Reid (painter)

Robert Lewis Reid was an American Impressionist painter and muralist.-Life and work:Robert Reid was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Otto Grundmann, where he was also later an instructor...

, Willard Metcalf

Willard Metcalf

Willard Leroy Metcalf was an American artist born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter...

, Frank Weston Benson

Frank Weston Benson

Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the...

, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Thomas Dewing

Thomas Wilmer Dewing was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and later settled into a studio in New York City...

, Joseph DeCamp

Joseph DeCamp

Joseph Rodefer DeCamp was an American painter.-Biography:Born in Cincinnati, Ohio where he studied with Frank Duveneck. In the second half of the 1870s he went with Duveneck and fellow students to the Royal Academy of Munich...

, and Edward Simmons

Edward Simmons (painter)

Edward Emerson Simmons was an American Impressionist painter, remembered for his mural work. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister....

. Abbott Handerson Thayer

Abbott Handerson Thayer

Abbott Handerson Thayer was an American artist, naturalist and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals and landscapes, he enjoyed a certain prominence during his lifetime, as indicated by the fact that his paintings are part of the most important U.S. art collections...

 and Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

 were asked to join the group when it was formed; however, they refused. When Twachtman died in 1902, William Merritt Chase

William Merritt Chase

William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...

 joined in his place.

All of The Ten were active in either New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 or Boston. They were generally considered exponents of Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

and established in their careers. In their charter, they agreed to resign from the Society and hold their own annual exhibition, protesting the Society’s perceived emphasis on “too much business and too little art.” For its part, the Society claimed it was “liberal” with dissenters, but some members felt it should stand for “traditional art” and not vacillate with each passing art movement. It was content to let dissenters leave rather than try to appease them.

The Ten held annual exhibitions for twenty years; eventually the group fell apart from deaths among the members and as their art was deemed reactionary in comparison with Urban Realism and other movements which came to the public’s attention.