William McGregor Paxton

(1869-1941)

Glitter 45 x 36 1/4 in. (114.3 x 92.1 cm.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Vose Galleries, Boston, by January 1987.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, December 3, 1987, lot 223.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, May 27, 1999, lot 96.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, September 29, 2010, lot 130.
Private collection, New Jersey.
Sale, Bonhams, New York, May 23, 2018, lot 40, sold by the above.
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.

Exhibited
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 125th Annual Exhibition, January 26-March 16, 1930, p. 45, no. 336, illustrated.
Boston, Horticultural Hall, Boston Tercentenary Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibition, July 1930, p. 5, no. 10, illustrated.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, William McGregor Paxton, N.A., Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, November 19-December 14, 1941, p. 18, no. 23.
Indianapolis Museum of Art, William McGregor Paxton, August 16-October 1, 1978, pp. 116, 142-44, pl. 61, no. 61, illustrated, and elsewhere.
Boston, Vose Galleries, William McGregor Paxton, N.A. 1896-1941, November 1979, p. 4, no. WP-10, illustrated.
Memphis, Tennessee and Youngstown, Ohio, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens and The Butler Institute of American Art, William McGregor Paxton and Elizabeth Okie Paxton: An Artistic Partnership, 2019.
The San Diego Museum of Art, extended loan for public exhibition, 2021-22.

Literature
A.S. Riggs, "The 125th Academy Show in Philadelphia," Art and Archaeology, Washington, D.C., March 1930, vol. XXIX, no. 3, pp. 133, 136-37, illustrated.
"Contemporary Paintings at Fine Arts Exhibition," Daily Boston Globe, July 13, 1930, p. B8, illustrated.
"Popular Awards for Exhibits, Tercentenary Fine Arts Show Closes," The Boston Globe, August 1, 1930, vol. CXVIII, no. 22, p. 6.
"Paintings Prove Strongest in Appeal to the Public, Ballot at Tercentenary Fine Arts Exhibition Shows Sculptures-Second 'Glitter,' by W.M. Paxton, Gets Highest Vote," The Boston Globe, August 16, 1930, vol. CXVIII, no. 47, p. 5, illustrated.
The Magazine Antiques, New York, January 1987, vol. 131, p. 18.
P.H. Falk, A.A. Bien, eds., The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Volume III, 1914-1968, Madison, Connecticut, 1989, p. 362, no. 336.

Glitter is an exemplary idealized portrait that beautifully demonstrates William McGregor Paxton's refined painterly techniques and exhibits his mature abilities as an artist to imbue the women and the romantic interiors they inhabit with an unparalleled elegance. Paxton was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1869 to James and Rose Doherty Paxton. By the mid-1870s, the Paxton family relocated to Newton Corner, Massachusetts outside of Boston to open a catering business and at age eighteen, Paxton gained admittance to the Cowles Art School on scholarship studying under Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890). From there, Paxton traveled to Paris to further his studies, first at the prestigious Ecole de Beaux Arts, under the tutelage of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), one of the most prominent salon painters of his time, and then later at the Academie Julien. Paxton eventually returned to America and the Cowles Art School where he studied under Joseph De Camp (1858-1923). De Camp was a proponent of Tonalism, founder of "The Ten," and a notable member of the Boston School, of which Paxton would become a significant progenitor of alongside Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938) and Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951).

After his marriage to fellow De Camp student, Elizabeth Vaughan Okie (1878-1972), Paxton went on to teach at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston from 1906 to 1913 and began solidifying his reputation as a sensitive academic painter - rendering beautiful portraits and genre scenes where refined women of society tend to leisurely activities. By the time he painted Glitter circa 1930, Paxton had solidified his reputation among the Boston School of painters, who were at the time working at the height of their artistic abilities producing many of their most celebrated works today. Paxton's fashionable sitter in the present work, identified as Mrs. Works of Boston, is depicted with rosy cheeks and plump, sensual arms wearing a luxuriously beaded gown. She sits delicately on the arm of a French-style chair with heavy, richly colored and intricately detailed curtains behind her. Paxton's restrained palette and precise rendering of both Mrs. Works and her setting align him with the academic tradition of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), while his emphasis on the effects of light on flesh and fabric reveal the inspiration Paxton and others of the Boston School found in the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Shortly after its completion, Paxton exhibited Glitter at the Boston Tercentenary Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1930 at Horticultural Hall where it received the highest number of votes for best picture.