In 1897, ten painters seceded from the Society of American Artists in protest of the group’s increasing focus on “too much business and too little art.” These 10 artists signed a charter for their own new group, agreeing to hold an annual exhibition, for each person to exhibit at every annual show, and to only admit new members who were unanimously supported, yet they assigned no name for themselves. They became known as “Ten American Painters,” or simply “The Ten,” by the press after their first exhibition, called “Ten American Painters,” which featured a Roman numeral X on the program.

Today, to celebrate this day of tens, we present 10 facts about The Ten.

1. The title “The Ten” is not the most applicable description for the group.

Originally, the founding members intended for there to be 12 members of the group: Frank Weston Benson, Joseph DeCamp, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Willard Metcalf, Robert Reid, Edward Simmons, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Abbott Handerson Thayer, John Henry Twachtmann, and J. Alden Weir. Homer rejected the group’s invitation, though, as he reportedly wasn’t a fan of official organizations. The New York Times announced “Eleven Painters Secede” on January 9, 1898 (the day after the artists resigned), but after the article went to press, Thayer changed his mind, leaving the final tally at ten members. Despite their signed agreement, most of the members didn’t exhibit every year; most of the annual exhibitions featured works by only nine artists. During the group’s 20 years, membership at any given time never surpassed 10 artists, but by the time they stopped exhibiting in 1919, eleven artists had been members—William Merritt Chase had joined the group in 1902 upon the death of Twachtman.

Pictured above are the 1908 members of The Ten, with Chase and not Twachtman.

2. The Ten were known for their Impressionist works, but at least one member had originally despised Impressionism.

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Thursday was the 53^rd anniversary of the death of Qi Baishi (1864-1957), who is considered an “obscure Chinese artist” by westerners but “the Picasso of China” by the Chinese. So, in the hopes of educating the west about this influential Chinese painter, today’s post is devoted to Qi Baishi.

1. Copying figures and motifs from The Mustard Seed Garden, a famous Qing Dynasty painting manual, Qi Baishi taught himself to paint. He was never formally trained at an art school, though he went on to teach at them, but he did find professional artists to mentor him. It was in training with his mentors that Qi realized art was something he could actually pursue professionally. The first paid painting gig he landed was as a family portraitist. He went on to become the most popular 20^th-century painter in China, as well as a skilled seal-carver and calligrapher.

2. Qi is perhaps known as much for his clever titles and inscriptions as he is for his painting skills. The painting of baby chicks, shown above, is titled “The sex of the chicks not yet determined,” while a painting of two chicks fighting for the same worm is inscribed “Friends in the past.” It’s probably no surprise, then, that Qi was also a poet. He formed the Longshan poets society in 1895 with several of his friends, who then elected him the director. His poetry collections, Jieshanyinguan Shicao and Baishi Shicao, were published in 1928 and 1933, respectively.

3. During the Sino-Japanese war, Qi was adamant that he did not want the Japanese purchasing his work. In 1937, when they gained control of Beijing, Qi locked his door and refused to admit any guests. He posted a sign outside that read, “Old Man Baishi has had a recurrence of heart sickness and has stopped receiving guests.” (Some sources say he went so far as to put a sign stating, “Old Man Baishi is dead.”) He also quit his job teaching at the Beijing Art College.
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The Dutch painter Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) left a lasting mark not only on the world of art, but on the world of firefighting as well. The talented landscape artist actually made his living—and a prosperous one at that—as an inventor and civil engineer. He didn’t generally consider himself a professional painter and, despite having patrons, still owned most of his work at the time he died.

Today, we’ll take a look at both aspects of his life: painter and inventor.

1. Jan van der Heyden received no real training in the visual arts. According to a source, “his only instruction consisted of a few desultory lessons received from an unknown glass-painter…” His reported inability to draw figures (“He could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts…”) may have been tied to his lack of formal artistic schooling. To compensate, he partnered with Adriaen van de Velde, who painted most of the figures in van der Heyden’s paintings until van de Velde’s death in 1672, at which point he received assistance from Johannes Lingelbach and Eglon van der Neer.

2. Branspuiten-boek (The Fire Engine Book) was written and illustrated by Jan van der Heyden and published in 1690. The famous book was the first firefighting manual ever published. Van der Heyden had been fascinated by firefighting since he was a boy, when he witnessed a fire in the town hall.

3. Considered to have been “the preeminent painter of cityscapes in the Netherlands,” van der Heyden employed a few tricks to get the über-realistic details seen in his paintings. To create the texture of bricks, he would press a metal plate into the paint while it was still wet. Similarly, he used moss or a sponge to create leaves on the trees.
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Last Friday marked the 14th anniversary of the death of Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996), an Australian Aboriginal artist. She has been described as “one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary indigenous Australian art,” “one of the world’s great painters,” and the “Desert Monet.” Akira Tatehata, the director of the National Museum of Art in Osaka, summed it up by saying, “…there can be only one way to describe her. She was just a genius.” So today we present some fun facts about Australia’s most popular aboriginal artist… perhaps their most popular artist period.

1. Only beginning her painting career at age 78, Emily Kngwarreye went on to become a highly prolific artist and “one-woman industry,” producing more than 3,000 paintings by the time she died at age 86. That averages out to about one painting a day for those eight years. (She finished her last painting, “Yam Awelye—Blue” just four days before her death.) Her high output was due in part to the dependence of others on her income: more than once she postponed retirement in order to continue providing funds for her community. Despite having no children of her own, she was responsible for as many as 80 kinspeople. The money she earned—estimated to be as much as A$500,000 a year—was spent not on herself, but on purchasing necessities and gifts for others, including supplying a car each week to the community.

2. Kngwarreye, who never studied art, developed her own unique methods for painting. She would spread her canvases on the ground and paint while sitting on or next to them. Over the years, she began using larger brushes, and eventually began trimming down the hairs around the edge of the brush, leaving the middle hairs longer. This styling of her brushes produced unique effects in her paintings, like dots with strong centers and softer edges. Kngwarreye could use both her hands to paint and would often switch from hand to hand, sometimes employing a brush in each hand to paint simultaneously. She was reportedly strongest with her left hand, though.

3. “Earth’s Creation,” the sister painting to “Earth’s Creation II” (shown above), is considered by some to be “Australia’s most important painting.” The 6.3 meter by 2.7 meter work, sewn together from 4 smaller pieces of linen, was sold in 2007 for $1.056 million, setting a record for the sale of indigenous art. But it wasn’t just the highest price paid for an indigenous work of art – at the time, it was the highest price ever paid in Australia for a work of art by a female artist, too.
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Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (1871*-1945) died just over 65 years ago, yet her artwork remains popular today. Take a look at her paintings, and you’ll see why she was the exception among female artists in her day: successful and praised by critics and fellow artists. As artist G.F. Watts declared: “I feel inclined to throw away my palette and brushes. What are my things by the side of such stuff as hers?”

1. Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale demonstrated an early skill for drawing, studying first under the art critic John Ruskin and then entering the Crystal Palace School of Art at age 17. Yet it took her three tries before she was accepted to the Royal Academy, perhaps due in part to that school’s reluctance to admit females, even though they had been allowed since 1860. Her first year* at the Academy, Brickdale won £40 for her mural design in an exhibition.

2. Due to a friendship with the aviator Charles Rolls (co-founder of Rolls-Royce and the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident), Brickdale had a keen interest in “aeroplane technology.” This interest is on display in her 1920 painting “The Forerunner,” which shows Leonardo da Vinci demonstrating his model flying machine to Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, the Duke and Duchess of Milan. In the painting, the only member of the audience who exhibits any interest in the machine is the duke’s son, Cesare.
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Yesterday marked the 108th anniversary of the death of Henryk Siemiradzki (1843-1902), a Polish painter known for his Graeco-Roman and New Testament scenes. We’ll kick off a new season of “Feel Art Again” with an overview of this talented Polish Academician.

1. Although Henryk Siemiradzki’s passion was his art, he was also a talented scientist. Under pressure from his family, like so many artists, Siemiradzki studied in the Physics-Mathematics School of Kharkov University, graduating with the degree of Kandidat. (The degree of Kandidat is a post-graduate scientific degree that is roughly equivalent to a Master of Science or a PhD, depending on who you ask.)

2. In 1872, Siemiradzki heard of the Vesuvius eruption and traveled to Naples (he was already in Italy, having visited Verona, Venice, and Florence) to see “this extraordinary phenomenon.” He found inspiration for his art at Pompeii, which he described as a “sole and rich mine” that delivers artistic inspiration “in large amount.” He would return to Pompeii several times; his “Night at Pompeii” was painted almost 10 years after his first visit to the site.
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Today’s “Feel Art Again” is a double-header. First up was a post on the German-English artist Johann Zoffany (1733-1810); now this post delves into his painting “The Tribuna of the Uffizi.” Read both to get the full story on this talented artist.

In the summer of 1772, Johann Zoffany was sent by Queen Charlotte to Florence with £300 and a letter of introduction. He was to paint highlights of the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s collection as they were displayed in the Uffizi Palace’s Tribuna. The result: “The Tribuna of the Uffizi.”

1. In Italian, tribuna refers to the semi-circular or semi-polygonal domed end of a basilica. The Tribuna at the Uffizi is an octagonal domed room that was intended as “a sort of Holy of Holies within the palace.” Designed for Francesco I de’Medici in the late 1580s, the Tribuna is the display room for the most important of the Medici collection of antiquities and paintings.

2. Zoffany’s painting may have been inspired by Jacob de Formentrou’s “Cabinet of Paintings” (at the time attributed to Gonzales Coques), which hung in Queen Charlotte’s workroom. “The Tribuna of the Uffizi” takes “Cabinet of Paintings” to the next level with almost twice as many paintings and people, plus the addition of sculptures.

3. Although Zoffany has been praised for his accurate reproduction of the Tribuna, he actually brought in art from elsewhere in the Medici collection, re-arranged works, and adjusted the perspective of the interior. Zoffany arranged the paintings and sculptures in his depiction of the Tribuna so that the stylistic, historical, and thematic relationships between artists could be appreciated. The perspective—which may not have been exactly intentional, but of which Zoffany was aware—is more like that of a cut-away model or a stage viewed from the back theater. The altered perspective enabled Zoffany to fit more of the works of art and the people, and to better group them.
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Today’s “Feel Art Again” is a double-header. First up is this post on Johann Zoffany, followed by a post delving into his painting “The Tribuna of the Uffizi.” Read both to get the full story on this talented artist.

Johann Zoffany (1733-1810) was a German-born English painter and favored portraitist of King George III and Queen Charlotte. It was said that when Zoffany was given a paintbrush, magic was created.

1. Johann Zoffany, who ran away from home at age 13 to study in Rome, was only able to move to England 12 years later due to the dowry he received upon marrying his wife. Once in England, though, he was well paid as the portraitist of the royal family. He painted George III, Charlotte, and their children in “charmingly informal scenes,” making him the first artist to depict the king’s family so informally. (While portraits such as “Queen Charlotte with her two eldest sons,” shown above, may appear formal to us today, at the time it was considered less formal than the standard royal portrait.)

2. As “the real creator and master of [the] genre,” Zoffany was well-known for his “theatrical conversation pieces.” The portraits depicted prominent actors in character, often with scenery behind them. It’s fitting, then, that Zoffany is referenced in the theatrical production The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert & Sullivan. In it, the Major-General sings of being able to distinguish works by Raphael from works by Zoffany.
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(This post was a week in the making, due to the overabundance of articles, reviews, and critiques on Walker and her art.)

The American artist Kara Walker had achieved “both notoriety and acclaim in the art world while still in her twenties.” Her art—much of which would be considered “not safe for work”—usually sells at prices between $30,000 and $80,000, despite (or perhaps because of) the ire and controversy it causes. Still only 40 years old, Walker is considered one of the most “prominent,” “controversial,” “provocative,” and “prolific” American artists alive today.

1. Kara Walker and her family moved from California to Stone Mountain, GA, (the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan) when she was 13. Walker suddenly “became black in more senses than just the kind of multicultural acceptance” in California. “Blackness became a very loaded subject,” a subject now reflected in Walker’s art. Her artwork addresses racism, sexuality, stereotypes, and violence, resulting in images that have been described as “tableaux that Toni Morrison might construct if possessed by Hieronymous Bosch.”

2. When a show of German Expressionist and Neo-Expressionist art arrived in Atlanta in the mid- or late-1980s, Walker found her calling. It seemed to her that “They hate themselves, they hate the world, and they hate painting.” The paintings were “fraught with urgency and rage, and somewhere underneath all of that, a kind of—it can’t be called love—passion.” She thought to herself, “That’s what I want to do.”

3. Walker, who earned degrees from Atlanta College of Art (BFA) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA), once received an assignment to complete 100 drawings in one sitting. She has maintained the practice every since. According to Walker, “sometimes the first 75 are the dumbest, most idiotic, nondrawing, moronic stuff. You have to find a rhythm.”
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“Feel Art Again” returns with our first ever Icelandic artist. Einar Hákonarson, who celebrated his 64th birthday yesterday, is “one of Iceland’s best known artists.” Considered to be the artist who “brought the figure back into Icelandic painting,” Hákonarson has created art that spans from pop to figurative to expressionistic.

1. Einar Hákonarson began attending The National Art School of Iceland, where he studied for 4 years, at the young age of 15. After a stint at Sweden’s Valand Art University, Hákonarson returned to The National Art School, this time as a 21-year-old instructor. Younger than many of his students, Hákonarson grew a beard to look more the part of an instructor. He’s worn the beard ever since.

2. Hákonarson is a leader in the Icelandic arts world. He was the driving force behind the formation of the Icelandic Printmakers Association in 1969 and served as its first president. The following year, he co-founded an art school, Myndsyn, a colleague. When Hákonarson became the director of The National Art School in 1978, he founded the printmaking department and the sculpture department and reconstructed the ceramics department.
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