Elizabeth Okie Paxton

Elizabeth Okie Paxton (born March 17, 1878 in Providence , † April 2, 1972 in Boston ) was an American painter . She is best known for still life and domestic genre scenes in the style of Tonalism and Impressionism . Her husband was the painter William McGregor Paxton .

Life

Elizabeth Okie was born in Providence to Howard Okie and his wife Elizabeth, née Vaughn. The family also included his sister Adele. Elizabeth Okie received her artistic training in the early 1890s at the Cowles Art School in Boston. One of her teachers was William McGregor Paxton, to whom she became engaged in 1896. Her environment also included the painters Joseph DeCamp Ernest Lee Major , Edmund C. Tarbell and Philip Leslie Hale , who, like Okie and Paxton, belong to the Boston School artist group . Elizabeth Okie's marriage to William McGregor Paxton followed on January 3, 1899. The couple remained childless and lived in Newton . The summer months were both often spent on the Massachusetts coast on Cape Cod or Cape Ann . From 1901 the Paxtons made repeated trips to Europe.

Elizabeth Okie Paxton repeatedly modeled and supported her husband in his work. In her own work, she focused on still lifes and interiors. Her style of painting is partly reminiscent of paintings by the French Impressionists, with the compositions occasionally showing the influence of Jan Vermeer and Jean Siméon Chardin . She painted floral still lifes and arrangements with decorative dishes particularly often. In particular, precious porcelain can be seen repeatedly in her pictures.

Elizabeth Okie Paxton took part in many exhibitions. She showed her works in 1916 and 1917 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and between 1912 and 1941 was represented six times at the Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennale in Washington, DC . She has also exhibited at the National Academy Museum and School in New York City several times . At the world exhibition Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 she received a silver medal for the painting In the Morning . It was also represented at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.

After the death of her husband in 1941, Elizabeth Okie Paxton lived in Boston. In the last years of her life, she devoted herself primarily to her husband's estate. She died in 1972 at the age of 94. Works in public collections include the paintings Sick a-Bed from 1916 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia), At Auction from 1920 ( Sheldon Museum of Art , Lincoln (Nebraska) ) and The open window from 1921 ( Museum of Fine Arts, Boston )

literature

• Petra Gördüren: Paxton, Elizabeth Okie . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 94, de Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-023260-8 , p. 464.
• Robert H. Gammell: The Boston painters . Parnassus Imprints, Orleans, Mass. 1986, ISBN 0-940160-31-5 .
• Ann Lee Morgan: The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists . Oxford University Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-537321-9 . (Entry on Elizabeth Okie Paxton under Paxton, William McGregor , p. 364.)

Web links

Commons : Elizabeth Okie Paxton  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files