print
- Museum number
- 1980,0223.17
- Title
-
Object: Lunch room at the League
-
Object: The lunch room
- Description
-
Men and women seated or standing around tables, woman reading paper behind. 1918
Drypoint
- Production date
- 1918
- Dimensions
-
Height: 151 millimetres
-
Width: 202 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Stephen Coppel, 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', with the assistance of Jerzy Kierkuc-Bielinski, BMP, 2008, no. 10.
Peggy Bacon's first drypoint shows a scene of lunchtime at the Art Students League, which provided the subject matter for many of her early prints and where she often worked on the plates in situ. Bacon has portrayed herself, second row left, in striped jumper, looking out to the viewer; her fellow women students include Dorothy Varian, beside her; Doris Rosenthal, first row, in profile; and Isabel Howland, with glasses and hat in centre. Among the men who have been identified is Edmund Duffy, later a newspaper caricaturist, upper right, in jacket and tie, turned to the left.
As with Sloan, Bacon's technique was based upon observation and is anecdotal in nature. Although Sloan never taught her etching or drypoint but only gave her tuition in quick charcoal sketching, life class drawing and composition, Bacon was certainly aware of his etchings. Yet, in her early prints, Bacon's stylistic handling of the figures is more schematized and flattened than in the etchings of her mentor. The figures are first outlined and then filled in with shading, with particular emphasis given to the description of texture and pattern. Careful examination reveals that Bacon reworked certain areas of this initial plate, notably the 'ghost' figures of a woman in glasses with a bob haircut, centre left, and a spectacled man in a trilby hat beside the upper left figure in profile.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2008 Apr.-Sept. BM, 'The American Scene', cat. no.10
- Acquisition date
- 1980
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1980,0223.17