Jan 27, 2022 - Sale 2593

Sale 2593 - Lot 227

Price Realized: $ 6,240
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

PEGGY BACON (1895-1987)


A Few Ideas.
Drypoint. 205x252 mm; 8 1/4x10 1/4 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin. 1928.

A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce print. Flint 71.

A Few Ideas represents a scene in the artist George Biddle's book-filled living room in his house on the Hudson River in Croton, a town close to Cross River, where Bacon and her artist husband, Alexander Brook, had themselves purchased a home in the late 1920s. Tarbell notes, "It is extraordinary how these artists found time to socialize extensively, create art prolifically, and maintain stimulating home lives for their children. Many of the artists shown in A Few Ideas exhibited together in November 1927 at Wanamaker's Galleries in a show arranged by Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery, Holger Cahill of the Newark Museum, and Armin W. ("Pat") Riley," (Peggy Bacon, Personalities and Places, Washington, DC, 1975, pages 26-27). Pictured in the scene, left to right, around the table, are Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Mrs. George Biddle (Jane Belo), John Carroll, Louise Hellstrom, George Biddle, Jules Pascin, and Katherine Shubert-Kuniyoshi Schmidt; and left to right across the background, Henry ("Josh") Billings, Alexander Brook, "Pat" Riley (the future division administrator for the National Recovery Administration; then the manager of Wanamaker's in New York), Peggy Bacon, Inez Carroll, and Mrs. Riley.