The Philadelphia Ten. Part 1 – The beginnings and the facilitators.

A month ago, I looked at the life of English artist Louise Swinnerton and told of her struggle to be accepted into the male-dominated art establishment. It was the time of the suffragettes and their struggle for women’s rights. A similar struggle was taking place across the Atlantic in America where, like the female artists of Britain, the American female artists were struggling to get a foothold in their own art establishments.

All artists need to be able to exhibit their work so that they can enhance their reputation and be recognised as talented painters but also they need to be able to sell their paintings. Too often, females who wanted to learn to paint were dismissed as people who just wanted to paint as a hobby. Why should they earn money from their paintings? Surely the female just needs to marry a wealthy man and let him provide for her. Wouldn’t it be much better if she stayed at home and looked after her husband and their children? A simple male philosophy of the time but of course women were determined to strike out on their own.

In my next two blogs I am looking at the birth of the Philadelphia Ten, often simply referred to as The Ten, an embryonic group of female artists and sculptors that went on to exhibit their work together for nearly thirty years. In the second part of the blog I will look at some of these aspiring artists, based in Philadelphia, who were members of the collective and who, through this group, fought their way to success in the world of American art. The Philadelphia Ten existed between 1917 and 1945 and, during this twenty-eight-year period, regularly exhibited their work together in large annual group shows at the National Academy of Design, the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors’ the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Club of Philadelphia. Although having their work accepted by the various exhibition jurists at these annual events was a great achievement there were still hurdles to overcome, such as the number of paintings each of the women was allowed to submit and, after having their paintings accepted, the whereabouts of the hanging position of their works within the exhibition, as this was left to the hanging jurists. For young aspiring female artists, it was a long struggle to have all their work displayed and their aspiration of having more paintings exhibited led to the formation of the Philadelphia Ten.

Before the “formation” of The Ten could take place there had to be an establishment for them to learn their trade and somebody to support their desire to become painters. Enter onto the scene Sarah Worthington, who would later become a renowned nineteenth-century American philanthropist and patron of the arts. She was born into a powerful political family on May 10th, 1800, at Chillicothe, Ohio, the daughter of an Ohio senator. She led a charmed life, going to private schools in Kentucky and later Washington D.C. At the age of sixteen, she married her first husband, Edward King, the son of a renowned New York politician, Rufus King. The couple, who lived in Cincinnati, went on to have five children. Her husband died in 1836 and she moved to Cambridge Massachusetts to be close to two of her sons who were attending Harvard University.

In 1844, she married William Peter, who, at the time, was the British consul to Philadelphia. The couple lived in Philadelphia and it was here that Sarah Worthington King Peter began her philanthropic career. Knowing the difficulties women had in progressing with their art, she founded the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1848. It was the first American art school devoted exclusively to the training of women. It originally was not simply a fine arts college but one which was set up to teach a trade to women, who struggled to support themselves.  They were taught all about lithography, wood carving, and design, which could then be used during the making of household items such as carpets and wallpaper. The institution was renamed Moore College of Art & Design in 1932 after Joseph Moore, Jr. set up a $3 Million-dollar endowment in memory of his parents.  Sarah Worthington Peter’s original vision continues to drive the College’s mission to educate women for careers in the visual arts.  Sarah’s second husband died in 1853 and she returned to Cincinnati where she would stay for the rest of her life. She continued with her philanthropy and established the Ladies’ Academy of Fine Arts.

Having established the Philadelphia School of Design for Women it was important to staff it with the best teachers. Two of the best and most influential teachers, during the days when the Philadelphia Ten were learning about art, were Henry Bayley Snell and Elliot Dangerfield, both talented landscape artists.

Henry Bayley Snell, an Englishman, was born in Richmond in September 1858 where he remained until, at the age of seventeen, he emigrated to New York where he attended the Art Students League. In his twenties, to eke out a meagre living, Snell supported himself by working in the blueprint department of an engineering firm, and by producing marine scenes for a Photoengraving Company. In 1888, thirty-year-old Snell married artist Florence Francis. It was in 1899 that Snell was given the post of art teacher at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. That same year the couple travelled to visit a fellow painter, William Lathrop in his hometown of New Hope, Maine. Liking the town so much the couple moved there in 1900.

In 1921, along with Frank Leonard Allen, Snell founded the Boothbay Studios in Boothbay Harbour, Maine, which operated as a summer school. Henry B Snell remained as a teacher at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women until his death in 1943 and during his early days there, he taught many artists who became part of the Philadelphia Ten. During his teaching years, he travelled abroad extensively, frequently accompanied by his students. It was his reputation both as a teacher and a painter that lured many artists to the New Hope Area.

The other lecturer who greatly influenced the women was the watercolourist, John Elliott Parker Daingerfield. Dangerfield was born in March 1859 at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the son of Captain John Elliott Daingerfield, commander of a Confederate arsenal, and Matilda Wickham DeBrau Daingerfield. However, from a young age he was raised nearby in Fayetteville, North Carolina and he is looked upon as one of the most important artists to come from this area.  From a young age, Daingerfield’s dream was to become an artist and early on in life he learned some basics of drawing and painting from a sign painter in Fayetteville as well as assisting a commercial photographer and a china painter. In 1880, at the age of twenty-one, he decided to pursue a formal art education and went to New York where he enrolled at the National Academy of Design. During his first year there he produced his painting entitled, The Monk Smelling a Bottle of Wine, which was exhibited at the Academy in 1880.

In New York, Daingerfield worked as an apprentice in the studio of William Satterle. So impressed by his student that he offered him a job as an instructor in his still life class. To progress further in the world of art, Dangerfield attended classes at the Art Students League.  Daingerfield’s most influential mentor was George Inness, whom he met in 1884 when he rented studio space at Holbein Studios on Fifty-fifth street. “Master and pupil” would often study each other’s work. Innes taught Dangerfield the technique of how to get the atmospheric effects of light by mixing layers of paint with thin layers of varnish and it was this procedure that brought about a wonderful sense of mood and tone.

In 1886, Dangerfield’s health began to deteriorate and he decided to leave New York and return to North Carolina and the town of Blowing Rock where he hoped to recuperate. He fell in love with the area and decided to make his home amongst the peace and tranquillity of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Daingerfield spent the rest of his life travelling between his studios in Blowing Rock and New York City and taught out of his studio in North Carolina in the summers and at the Philadelphia School of Design and the Art Students League in the winters. Dangerfield was a very spiritual man and sensed the connection between art and spirituality. He once said:

“…Art is the principle flowing out of God through certain men and women by which they perceive and understand the beautiful. The office of the Artist is to express the beautiful…”

The Philadelphia Ten’s first joint exhibition was held on February 17th 1917 at the Art Club of Philadelphia at 235 South Carmac Street. In all, 245 paintings were on display and this exhibition was looked upon as the birth of the Philadelphia Ten. Following the great success of the event, the group’s exhibitions became an annual event and art critics and collectors always looked upon them as exhibitions of the highest quality, embracing a wide selection of subject matter and a variety of styles. The fact that the artists were able to exhibit a large number of their paintings at each exhibition soon allowed the observers to be able to easily recognise their individual styles, something that had not happened before due to the small number of paintings large exhibitions would allow each artist to show.

In my next blog I will look at the life and works of some of the artists who formed the Philadelphia Ten.