Oil on J. H. Hatfield's Sketching Panel, 1907, signed and dated at upper left corner, later pencil inscriptions to verso, framed.

Panel 14 x 11 in.; Frame dimensions 18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.

Private Collection, Long Island, New York

William McGregor Paxton was born in Baltimore, Maryland but moved with his family as a young boy to Newton, Massachusetts in the mid-1870s. Despite his fairly plebeian upbringing, Paxton is revered for his quiet and reserved paintings of fashionable upper class and beautiful women at ease in refined interiors.

At the age of eighteen, Paxton received a scholarship to study at the Cowles Art School in Boston. He later traveled to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean-Leon Gérôme and the Académie Julian. Upon his return to America in 1893, he settled in Newton and continued his studies with Joseph De Camp at the Cowles School. He also worked as an instructor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, alongside colleagues Frank Weston Benson and Edmund Tarbell.

Paxton gained much success during his lifetime. He was a elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, completed murals for the Army and Navy Club of New York and was commissioned to paint portraits of Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland. His paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Boston Athenæum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and others.

After examining the painting under UV light, it appears to have a later varnish with a small "window" over the signature.

There is no evidence of restoration or inpainting, it does have some surface grime and could use a cleaning, there is drying crackle and a slight bow to the board.

$5,000 - 10,000