Tea Leaves

William McGregor Paxton

1909 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Paxton often depicted refined women—such as his patrons’ wives and daughters—at leisure in handsome Boston interiors of the sort they would have decorated and occupied. By equating women with the precious aesthetic trappings that surrounded them, Paxton echoed the spirit of the novelist Henry James, who portrayed women as collectible objects in novels such as Portrait of a Lady (1881). Paxton’s restrained palette and precise rendering of figures and setting here and elsewhere allied him to the academic tradition of his Parisian teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Artist

William McGregor Paxton

Date

1909

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of George A. Hearn, 1910