Philadelphia ten

DEFINITION

A female group of artists, members painted and exhibited together from 1917 to 1945 with the purpose of finding wider markets for their artwork and functioning independently from a male-dominated art world. All had trained in Philadelphia. Their first exhibition of their thirty-year annual exhibitions was at the Art Club of Philadelphia and offered for sale 247 paintings. Although known as The Philadelphia Ten, membership fluctuated, and at its highest number had 23 painters and 7 sculptors. Participants were distinctive for quality of production, self sufficiency---liberated before the term acquired its feminist meaning--- and unconventional, independent life styles. Many never married, and few had children. Some historians have suggested that the women formed The Philadelphia Ten in response to The Eight in New York City. Among the members of The Ten were Theresa Bernstein, Mary Colton, Fern Coppedge, Edith Wood, Joan Hartley, Nancy Ferguson and Genevieve Hamlin.Source: Page Talbott, 'Philadlelphia Ten', "American Art Review", February, 1998; AskART biographies (LPD)