Claude Monet begins spending most of his time at or near Giverny after his travels of the 1880s, concentrating on one series after another.

He buys additional property there, begins his Haystack series, and works also on his Poplar series on the Epte.

Willard "Willy" Metcalf, thirty-two in 1890, had visited and summered four times at Giverny, home to Monet since 1883.

Although Metcalf knew the older French painter, it is the rustic village itself that had drawn the young American to the area.

The calm structure of Giverny's plowed fields, stone-walled roads, and tile-roofed farmhouses fascinate many painters.

In Metcalf's oil Midsummer Twilight (c. 1890; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), several building eaves and crop lines point toward the shimmering orb of a full moon rising through rosy clouds over the eastern horizon.

Sunset imparts a yellow warmth to the stuccoed walls, while the complementary color of violet marks the lengthening shadows of late afternoon.

The deep blue-greens of the foreground bushes similarly balance and contrast with the red-oranges of the terra-cotta roofs.

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.