Elizabeth Okie Paxton

Elizabeth Okie Paxton
Born	Elizabeth Vaughan Okie Providence, Rhode Island
Nationality	American
Education	Cowles Art School
Known for	Modern still life and interior paintings
Notable work	The Breakfast Tray
Movement	Modernism
Spouse(s)	William McGregor Paxton

Elizabeth Okie Paxton (1877–1971) was an American painter, married to another artist William McGregor Paxton (1869–1941). The Paxtons were part of the Boston School, a prominent group of artists known for works of beautiful interiors, landscapes, and portraits of their wealthy patrons. Her paintings were widely exhibited and sold well.

Elizabeth Vaughan Okie was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of Dr. Howard Okie (1846–1902) and Elizabeth Vaughn and had one sister Adele.

Okie Paxton studied painting at the Cowles Art School, with Joseph DeCamp and Ernest Major. She also took instruction from William McGregor Paxton, who had been a student at Cowles, during his brief tenure teaching at the school.

She was engaged in 1896 to William McGregor Paxton, one of her art instructors, and married him on January 3, 1899. Beginning in 1901, they traveled to Europe together. They often spent their summers on Cape Cod and Cape Ann, and lived in Newton, Massachusetts.

As a great beauty, she served as his muse before and during their marriage, modeling for many of his works, like the painting in which she was dressed for the ball. The couple had no children, instead focusing their creative energy on their work. Okie Paxton put her emphasis on her husband's career, managing it before and after his death at the expense of her career. She moved to Boston's Fenway Studios after her husband died.

William McGregor Paxton's papers—including sketches, correspondence, and photographs—are held at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The papers include Okie Paxton's correspondence about her paintings, exhibitions, and sales of her husband's works. It also contains sketches of her by Paxton.

Of the Bostonian women artists born in the 19th century, most came from families that provided sufficient financial means to open their own studios and pay for their education. Fortunately, Boston was a city that had a number of great teachers who would teach women, including her husband, William Gregor Paxton; Edmund C. Tarbell; Philip Hale; and William Morris Hunt. Education for women occurred in separate classes and at a higher cost than that for men. Women often went on to study in Europe. Generally women stuck to domestic and still life scenes. Many women married late, regardless of when they married, they often struggled with managing the traditional roles of wife and mother with their career as an artist. Okie Paxton, considered by one art critic to be a better painter than her husband, "painted ravishing still lifes of moments in time". But like Lilian Westcott Hale, who was also a talented artist married to an artist, her career was less important than that of her husband.

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