Jean-Leon Gérome, a highly successful artist, exerts great influence in the Paris art world and is exceedingly hostile to the Impressionists.

As a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts, he has counted among his many pupils Odilon Redon and the American artists Thomas Eakins and J. Alden Weir.

Fifty-six in 1880, he has begun concentrating on sculpture.

The Ten, a group of ten American painters, first exhibit together in 1898, in New York City.

The members are Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Thomas W. Dewing, Joseph DeCamp, Frank W. Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Robert Reid, and E.E. Simmons.

Most members of the group paint in an Impressionist style.

Although their work does not differ radically in technique or subject matter from that of the artists who participate in the large annual exhibitions of the Society of American Artists and the National Academy of Design, they choose to exhibit independently, hoping to draw public attention to their paintings.

All are former members of the Society of American Artists.

Winslow Homer had declined an invitation to join the group; Abbott Handerson Thayer had accepted membership but withdrew before the group's first exhibition.