Presidents of the USA from 1969-1921

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
James A. Garfield (1881)
Chester Arthur (1881-1885)
Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

All our artists with dates of birth and death.

1. La Farge  1835-1910
2. Homer  1836-1910
3. Mary Cassatt:  1844-1926
4. Ryder  1847-1917
5. Chase: 1849-1916
6. Thayer  1849 - 1921
7. Dewing: 1851- 1938
8. Twachtman: 1853- 1902
9. Sargent:  1856-1925
10. Hassam: 1859- 1935
11. Tanner: 1859- 1937

Ten American Painters and other societies.

Ten American Painters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ten in 1908

The Ten American Painters, generally known as The Ten, resigned from the Society of American Artists 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 in New York City twenty years earlier, in a progressive movement led by 

Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Winslow Homer.

The Ten were Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, 

Frank Weston Benson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Joseph DeCamp, and Edward Simmons. 

Abbott Handerson Thayer and Winslow Homer were asked to join the group when it was formed; 

however, they refused.

 When Twachtman died in 1902, William Merritt Chase joined in his place.

All of The Ten were active in either New York City or Boston. They were generally considered exponents

 of Impressionism 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

other movements which came to the public’s attention.

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.

The group began meeting in 1874 at the home of Richard Watson Gilder and his wife Helena de Kay Gilder.

 In 1877 they formed the Society, and subsequently held annual art exhibitions.

Some of the first members included sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose work had been rejected from 

a National Academy exhibition in 1877; painters Walter Shirlaw, Robert Swain Gifford, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 

John LaFarge, Julian Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, and Alexander Helwig Wyant; 

and designer and artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. 

Eventually most of the best-known artists of the day joined the group, and many held dual membership 

with the National Academy.

The cycle of conservative to progressive repeated in 1897 when the Ten American Painters group broke away 

from the Society of American Artists. The Society ultimately merged with the National Academy in 1906.

Notable members of the National Academy Of Design

William Merritt Chase Thomas Eakins

Winslow Homer

Augustus Saint-Gaudens John Singer Sargent Henry Ossawa Tanner Louis Comfort Tiffany

The Tile Club was a group of 31 notable New York painters, sculptors, and architects 

- including Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, J. Alden Weir, 

John Henry Twachtman, Ehilu Vedder, Edwin Austin Abbey, Arthur Burdett Frost, 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens,  and Stanford White - who met together between 1877 and 1887. 

The club formed for purpose of camaraderie, painting on ceramic tiles and traveling 

together on group excursions and sketching trips. 

They banded together to promote, in America, issues and concepts about aesthetics and 

the fine and decorative arts that were prevalent within the British Aesthetic Movement. 

But the club also championed American art in general - and did much to popularize 

plein air painting and the Impressionist style.

Gilded Age, a summary

Wealthy industrialists eager to acquire culture began to patronize native artists who had achieved international recognition. John Singer Sargent and Cecilia Beaux created portraits of these new patrons, while John LaFarge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens made luxurious adornments for their homes. One group of painters - including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, and Henry Ossawa Tanner - responded especially to the fascination with exotic mid-eastern, Egyptian or "Oriental" cultures that characterized this age of international imperialism. The educated and refined aspect of Gilded Age culture is expressed in Renaissance-inspired paintings by Abbott Handerson Thayer and Mary Cassatt. Romantic literary works by visionary Albert Pinkham Ryder symbolize the idealized strivings of this generation, while the rugged landscapes of Winslow Homer emblemize the struggle and conflict that marked this period of contending social and industrial forces.

The phrase "the Gilded Age" arose from the title of a 1873 popular novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner about America's "golden road to fortune" that contrasted shallow materialism with the golden age of Greece. The period from the 1870s to World War I became identified as the Gilded Age. Throughout the era the United States was on the rise to power and taking a place on the international stage politically, economically, and culturally. Against this backdrop a new and important collaboration developed between wealthy American patrons and artists, based on European Renaissance ideals.

"Great ambition characterized this period in America," said Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Artists and patrons rose to new heights, as the 1876 Centennial engendered a strong sense of national pride and eagerness to match Europe's aristocracies." (Broun is a KU alumna and former acting director of the Spencer Museum.)

A heightened sophistication permeates the portraits in the exhibition. Society portraitist John Singer Sargent posed "Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler" (1893), (see left) whose family was heir to John Jacob Astor's fortune, flanked by old-master paintings. Cecilia Beaux portrayed her brother-in-law Henry Sturgis Drinker, a hard-driving corporate railroad lawyer, as relaxed and casual in "Man with the Cat" (1898), resplendent in a cream-colored suit and pink shirt.

This was also an international age, when artists and their patrons traveled widely to visit exotic cultures. Louis Comfort Tiffany's "Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco" (1873) signals this interest and foreshadows the artist's later development of opulent interiors

Vast fortunes amassed during the Industrial Revolution led to a wave of elegant townhouses, and these were settings for fine collections and decorations. "Apollo with Cupids" (1880-82), a decorative panel by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John LaFarge, once adorned the dining room of Cornelius Vanderbilt's Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City. The work is embellished with African mahogany, hammered bronze, colored marbles, mother-of-pearl and ivory.

(...)

Paintings by the visionary artist Albert Pinkham Ryder(...) are each a story of betrayal and redemption based on literary sources. The complex technique Ryder used causes his paintings to be unusually fragile, so the museum rarely lends his works. Special humidity controlled packing and shipping technology allows these works to be shared throughout America.

Winslow Homer, like Ryder, probed beneath the glitter of the Gilded Age to explore undercurrents of anxiety. "High Cliff, Coast of Maine" (1894) is among the greatest of Homer's late seascapes, a canvas filled with waves pounding on a rocky shore. These opposing forces of nature resonated in a society struggling with economic instability, labor unrest, and controversial new theories of Darwin, Freud, and others. The intimate world of women and children at home, seen in "An Interlude" (1907) by William Sergeant Kendall, offered refuge.

Artists and their patrons shared an ambition to present American civilization as having grown past provincialism to full maturity, equal to Europe's much-admired culture. Evocations of music abound, as in Childe Hassam's woman at a piano called "Improvisation" (1899) and Thomas Wilmer Dewing's allegorical "Music" (about 1895). Spiritual themes -- countering fears that Americans were overly materialistic -- appear in Abbott Handerson Thayer's four paintings in the exhibition, including the ever-popular "Angel" (1887).

Overall, the ambitions of individual artists and patrons, and of the nation at large, combined to make the period of the 1870s through the 1910s one of enormous achievement in the visual arts. "This thrilling exhibition truly captures the elegant, idealistic side of life and art in Gilded Age America," said Susan Earle, Spencer Museum curator of European and American art.