1925

Lady-Artist (Self-Portrait)

American, 1895 - 1987

Peggy Bacon’s witty works often depict scenes from daily life. Here a bespectacled artist (probably Bacon herself) attempts to work from home in her cramped New York City apartment. She perches on a chair, balancing a copper plate in her lap and holding an etching needle in her left hand. Meanwhile, many eyes look on: neighbors peer out of the windows of the adjacent building, and even her cat deigns to look up, oblivious to the mouse scurrying behind. Bacon’s playful style and biting caricatures were well-suited to the pages of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, which frequently published her illustrations.