William M. Paxton

William M. Paxton is one of Boston’s most famous figure-portrait painters. Known as a “Tarbellite” or member of the Boston school of painting, like Tarbell, Benson, DeCamp and Hale the portraits of Paxton are in great demand and are highly desirable. 

Paxton studied at the Cowles Art School (Boston) with Dennis Miller Bunker, the Boston Museum School with Tarbell, Benson and DeCamp; the Académie Julian, Paris (1889-1980) and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with Gérôme. He was an Associate (1917) and a full National Academician (1928) of the National Academy of Design and a member of the Copley Society (Boston), the Salmagundi Club (NYC), the National Arts Club (NYC), the Guild of Boston Artists, the St. Botolph Club (Boston), the Philadelphia Art Club, the Allied Artists of America and the American Federation of Arts. Paxton exhibited extensively and won awards at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (prizes in 1915, 1921 and gold medal in 1928); the St. Louis Exposition (1904 medal); the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (prizes in 1919 and 1935) and in 1979 the Indianapolis Museum of Art held a posthumous retrospective of his work. 

Paxton taught strictly at the Museum School in Boston from 1906-1913, but was forced to resign when Tarbell and Benson decided to leave the school.  Known as “the court painter of Philadelphia” after he moved there, Paxton became famous for his rendering of light and shadow within interiors and for impressive portraits of famous people (like Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge). He painted at the Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street in Boston from 1905-1915 with his wife Elizabeth O. Paxton and he remains one of the most respected genre and portrait painters in America. He died in Baltimore, MD in 1941.

References: Pierce, P.J., Edmund C. Tarbell & the Boston School of Painting (1980); R.H. Ives Gammell notes in the PGI files and The Boston Painters, pp. 109-122; Three Hundred Years of American Art; National Academy Records and PAFA Exhibition Records compiled by Falk; Who’s Who in American Art, 1930-40.