As part of a closely-knit group of Boston painters, including Joseph DeCamp, Philip Hale, Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson, William McGregor Paxton enjoyed both cultural celebrity and financial reward. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, studied with Dennis Miller Bunker at the Cowles Art School, and continued his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1897, he traveled again to Europe where he studied the work of Velazquez and Vermeer, each of whom influenced the artist’s work. The natural light found in Paxton’s interior portraits directly relate to these masters and were highly praised by contemporary critics.

Upon his return to the United States, he was appointed instructor of drawing at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Museum School, where he taught for the next seven years. In 1910, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a painting by the artist, becoming the first public collection to own one of his works.

My Wife, Elizabeth, is a portrait of Elizabeth Okie Paxton. An artist in her own right, she specialized in still-life subjects and was a frequent exhibitor along with her husband at the annual exhibitions of contemporary American art held in, Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. They were engaged in the summer of 1896 and married in January 1899.

Paxton painted her several time during their marriage. In this painting, she appears as the youngest of all the known images, and, with details of the costume, can be dated to the year of their marriage. Her loving gaze, coupled with the extraordinary care with which it is painted, suggests that it is her wedding portrait.

She retained this painting in her possession until her death in 1971.