The Figurine by William McGregor Paxton was created in 1921. The painting is in Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington DC. The size of the work is 45,9 x 38,2 cm and is made of oil on canvas.
The Figurine illustrates the vogue for Asian decorative wares that informed American collecting tastes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, a Chinese blue-and-white jar is shown alongside a Chinese figurine; a maid delicately cleans the glass encasing the figurine. Paxton’s compositions often portray women in beautiful interiors. The light source from the left highlighting the woman’s rosy complexion, combined with the sensitive attention to detail, recall the works of the seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Read more in Smithsonian American Art Museum.
About the Artist: American painter William McGregor Paxton was born in Baltimore. Paxton attended Cowles Art School on a scholarship he attained at the age of 18. He studied with Dennis Miller Bunker and Cowles and then went to Paris to study under Jean-Léon Gérôme, at École des Beaux-Arts. Paxton taught from 1906 to 1913 at the Museum of Fine Arts School and painted briefly at Fenway Studios in Boston. He worked at the Harcourt Street Studios in Boston and when it burned in 1904 he lost close to 100 paintings… Read more
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