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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
PEGGY BACON Study for Morning Exercises.
Charcoal on thin wove paper, circa 1931. 350x425 mm; 13 7/8x16 7/8 inches. Signed in pencil, lower center recto and inscribed "Whose emotion is this, anyway!" in charcoal, upper right.
Preparatory sketch for Bacon's 1933 drypoint of Leon Barzin conducting a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic (see Flint 117).
Provenance: Kraushaar Galleries, New York, with the label; Helen Farr Sloan, New York and Delaware; sold Stair Galleries, Hudson, New York, February 3, 2017, lot 4; private collection, New York.
Bacon (1895-1987) was best known for her realistic representations of everyday life and her satirical caricatures. She studied at the Art Students League, New York, with Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Sloan and George Bellows, and taught herself drypoint there in between drawing classes. Looking back at her time at the League, Bacon said, "The years at the Art Students League were a very important chunk of life to me and very exhilarating. It was the first time in my life, of course, that I had met and gotten to know familiarly a group of young people who were all headed the same way with the same interests. In fact it was practically parochial." From the 1910s to the 1930s, she worked mainly in drypoint printmaking and also doing illustrations for the satirical magazine Bad News, while her later drawings appeared as illustrations in publications including The New Yorker, New Republic, Fortune and Vanity Fair. She further went on to illustrate over 60 books, 19 of which she also wrote.
Bacon exhibited frequently in New York from the 1910s onward, with galleries including Alfred Stieglitz's Intimate Gallery, the Weyhe Gallery and the Downtown Gallery (she had more than 32 solo exhibitions during her career), and was closely connected with other artists with ties to these galleries, including Katherine Schmidt and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.
