Artwork Details
75-3/4 x 35-3/8 in. (canvas) 85 x 45-1/4 x 3 in. (framed)
Mark DescriptionSigned, l.r.: PAXTON
Accession NumberGift of Robert Douglas Hunter
CopyrightAmerican Painting and Sculpture 1800-1945
Color PaletteThe artist [1869-1941]; Elizabeth Okie Paxton [1878-1972], the wife of the artist and his estate; by bequest to R. H. I. Gammell [1893-1981] in Boston, Massachusetts, 1971; Robert Douglas Hunter [1928-2014], Boston, Massachusetts; given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1979 (79.345).
- With its sinuous silhouette and theatrical pose, this figure is a powerful reminder of Paxton’s academic training in Paris. Yet instead of the smooth finish that lends French nudes their idealism, her skin is brushed with the ruddy reflections of nearby walls, giving it a sensuous realism.
- Paxton regarded this canvas as the masterpiece of his early career. It predates most of the elegant domestic scenes for which he and other Boston School painters are best known. (A more typical work hangs in gallery K208.)
- This nude stirred controversy among Paxton’s critics. Some found it “entirely modest,” while others were offended by its “aggressive nakedness,” although its rendering represented a “mythological” femininity that defined white women as ethereal and intangible.
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