TitleThe Waitress
Artist
William McGregor Paxton
(1869 - 1941)
Date1923
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/4 × 25 in.
Framed: 36 3/4 × 32 × 3 3/4 in.
SignedSigned upper right: "PAXTON"; on verso: "1929"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, January 15, 1929
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number981-P
Label TextPaxton was a member of the early 20th-century artists' group known as the Boston School, which included Edmund Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp, and Frank Benson. A common interest of these artists focused on the representation of upper-class women in a comfortable domestic interior, but they also occasionally portrayed working women. The Waitress features a model by the name of Edna, whom Paxton frequently pictured in the early 1920s.Paxton studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and had great respect for his teacher. In later years, he fondly recalled the unerring accuracy of Gérôme’s corrections. Paxton aimed to represent nature as exactly as possible and believed that it was sacrilegious to idealize or alter any aspect of it. He further believed that "if a painting does not have some kind of beauty, it isn't worth painting. . . . I should say that beautiful painting is a surface with paint applied to it in such a way that it produces a pleasurable emotion. . . . I should say that good painting is making a picture look as if you intended to have it look as it does."
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