Painter. Edmund Charles Tarbell, an American Impressionist painter, was a member of a group called the Ten American Painters, which was shortened to "The Ten." Protesting the limitations on an artist's ability, "The Ten" had seceded in 1898 from the Society of American Artists and exhibited together for the next twenty years. "The Ten" included Frank Weston Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Joseph DeCamp, Robert Reid, Edward Simmons, Thomas Dewing, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, and John H. Twachtman, to form the Ten American Painters. Born the son of a veteran of the American Civil War, he was a one-year-old when his father, Edmund Whitney Tarbell, died of typhoid fever while serving in the Union Army. His mother remarried to a shoe machinery manufacturer, whereupon he and his sister were sent to live with his grandparents in West Groton, Massachusetts. He started his art lessons very early, with the first at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, at the age of fifteen was apprenticed at the Forbes Lithographic Company, and in 1879 entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His classmates were Robert Reid and Frank Weston Benson, who became, like him, members of "The Ten." The art students traveled to Paris to study art in 1883, entering classes at the Académie Julian. There he learned to paint the classic Old Masters as well as Impressionism. In 1884, he toured Europe studying art. He admired the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Vermeer, and this impacted his work. In 1886, he returned to Boston, beginning a successful career as an illustrator, private art instructor, and portrait painter. He taught at the Museum School in Boston. From 1889 to 1912, he was the head of the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston. In 1913 he became president of the Guild of Boston Artists. In 1918 he became the directorship of the Corcoran School of Art at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He spent about seven years in Washington, D.C., but was abroad for a good part of this time, executing portraits. In 1920, the United States government commissioned him to paint portraits of President Woodrow Wilson and Marshall Ferdinand Foch, which are on exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery. His 1921 portrait of President Herbert Hoover is on display at the Smithsonian Art Museum. In 1905, he purchased a summer home in New Castle, New Hampshire. From a studio built on the riverbank he was able to see the flowers in his garden, as well as boats sailing the Piscataqua River; both would appear in some of his paintings. Upon retirement in 1926, he and the family lived at New Castle year-around. Besides the Smithsonian, his paintings are on exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, DeYoung Museum, National Academy Museum and School, New Britain Museum of American Art, Worcester Art Museum, and numerous other collections. His followers were dubbed the "Tarbellites." In 1888, he married Emeline Souther, and the couple had three daughters and a son. He often used his family members as models for his works. He painted "My Wife Emeline in a Garden" in 1890; "My Daughter Josephine" in 1915; "My Mother" (Portrait of Mrs. Frank Hartford) in 1890; "Portrait of Mary Tarbell," an undated lithograph; and later in his life in 1928, "Marjorie and Little Edmund." Besides his portraits, flower and boats, he painted several pieces with horses, such as "Hansom Cab in London." He considered his best work was his 1909 painting, "Girl Reading," which was in the Dutch style of Vermeer. This painting's debut was March of 1909 at the "Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Ten American Painters" at New York's Montross Gallery. He was the recipient of numerous awards and medals, including the Thomas B. Clarke prize of the National Academy of Design in 1890, 1894, and 1900; Columbian Exposition Medal in 1893; for his piece, "Arrangement in Pencil," the Julius Hallgarten Prize by the National Gallery; and the Lippincott Prize from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1895. His work has been offered at auction houses many times, with realized prices ranging from $562 USD to $4,226,500 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2000 the record price for this artist at auction is $4,226,500 USD for "Child and Boat," sold at Sotheby's New York in 2010.