Tea Leaves

William McGregor Paxton American

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.

Tea Leaves, William McGregor Paxton (American, Baltimore, Maryland 1869–1941 Boston, Massachusetts), Oil on canvas, American

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.