William McGregor Paxton 1861-1941

De Cordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts
Childs Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
Private Collection, Shreveport, Louisiana
The Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York
Marvin Sadik Fine Arts, Scarborough, Maine
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Mary Lublin writes, "Along with other Boston School painters including Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson and Joseph deCamp, William McGregor Paxton was known for his paintings of gracious women in expensive interiors, using a polished style which was well suited to his refined subjects.  He created an art of genteel luxury, offering his patrons an escape into a world of culture and beauty.

"In paintings including The Letter, Paxton's sophisticated mixture of references to Oriental and Western art reflect the internationalism of his aesthetic.  The work may in fact portray the artist's wife, Elizabeth Okie Paxton, dressed in a fashionable fur-trimmed jacket and seated at a European sécretaire abattant.  The gleaming Oriental jars and bowl which frame the sitter appear frequently in Paxton's work by around 1910, revealing the vogue fro japonisme which was prevalent in turn-of-the-century American Painting.

"Paxton was a superb technician, and his seamless brushstroke, smooth contours and hard surfaces reflect an inheritance from his training in the Parisian atelier of Gérôme and from his close study of Ingres' works hanging in the Louvre.  However, the rediscovery of Vermeer, which began in France during the early 1860s and developed in Boston in the 1880s and 1890s, was perhaps the most important influence on Paxton's style.  The quietism of mood, the evident love of texture and objects as well as the activity of letter-writing in this work demonstrate his appreciation for the Dutch master's art" (19th and 20th Century Paintings, New York, 1989, p. 52).