[1] William's father moved the Paxton family and established a catering business in Newton Corner, Massachusetts, in the mid-1870s.

[11] "William McGregor Paxton... benefited from an art-savvy wife who supported his career, using her energy in the bet that his offered the more secure future," said author and art historian Rena Tobey.

[9] Paxton taught from 1906 to 1913 at the Museum of Fine Arts School [2] and painted briefly at Fenway Studios in Boston.

[12] Maryhill Museum of Art says of his artistry, "Paxton was well known for the attention he gave to the effects of light and detail in flesh and fabric.

[3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art says of Paxton's Tea Leaves (1909) in their collection: In a windowless parlor permeated by soft light, a dreamy atmosphere, and the sounds of silence, two elegant women pass the time by doing very little or nothing at all.

Paxton hints at a narrative, but he asks that the viewer invent it, recapitulating the ambiguity of Vermeer's paintings, which he admired.

[13]Paxton employed a technique where only one area in his compositions was entirely in focus, while the rest was somewhat blurred, something he called "binocular vision" and credited to Vermeer.

He began to employ this system in his own work, including The New Necklace, where only the gold beads are sharply defined while the rest of the objects in the composition have softer, blurrier edges.