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Tea Leaves

1909
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 770
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.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Tea Leaves
  • Artist: William McGregor Paxton (American, Baltimore, Maryland 1869–1941 Boston, Massachusetts)
  • Date: 1909
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 36 1/8 x 28 3/4 in. (91.6 x 71.9 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of George A. Hearn, 1910
  • Object Number: 10.64.8
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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