Society of American Artists in the context of Helena de Kay Gilder

⭐ Core Definition: Society of American Artists

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. Helena de Kay Gilder, one of the founders, started the group after showing one painting at The National Academy of Design's annual show, where she was a student, and receiving a poor location within the show. Helena de Kay Gilder felt her paintings location reflected the academy's reluctance to accept new types of art. The group received public support from Clarence Cook, a writer and art critic who wrote for the Daily Tribune, as well as Helena de Kay Gilder's brother, Charles de Kay who was an art columnist and editor of The New York Times. Journalists played a large role in helping to organize the group and spread its message of being a liberal alternative to traditional artist groups.

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⭐ Core Definition: Society of American Artists
Society of American Artists in the context of John La Farge
Society of American Artists in the context of Wyatt Eaton

Society of American Artists in the context of John La Farge

John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics. La Farge made stained glass windows, mainly for churches on the American east coast, beginning with a large commission for Henry Hobson Richardson's Trinity Church in Boston in 1878, and continuing for thirty years. La Farge designed stained glass as an artist, as a specialist in color, and as a technical innovator, holding a patent granted in 1880 for superimposing panes of glass. That patent would be key in his dispute with contemporary and rival Louis Comfort Tiffany.

La Farge rented space in the Tenth Street Studio Building at its opening in 1858, and he became a longtime presence in Greenwich Village. In 1863 he was elected into the National Academy of Design; in 1877 he co-founded the Society of American Artists in frustration at the National Academy's conservatism. In 1892 La Farge was brought on as an instructor with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools to provide vocational training to students in New York City. He served as president of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1899 to 1904. In 1904, he was one of the first seven artists chosen for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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Society of American Artists in the context of Wyatt Eaton

Wyatt Eaton, baptised Charles Wyatt Eaton, (May 6, 1849 – June 7, 1896) was a Canadian-American portrait and figure painter, remembered as one of the founders of the Society of American Artists.

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