Description

Having studied with both George Bellows and John Sloan, Peggy Bacon was one of a growing number of women who sought independence and professional success in America’s cities. In this self-portrait, she portrayed herself with her etching needle poised on a copperplate. The crowded domestic setting invites her audience to see what it means to be an artist and a woman, with curious neighbors peering in and an inquisitive spider, like an omnipresent observer, above. While the easel and floor display drawings of a nude and a portrait—traditional art subjects—the copperplate reveals a more ordinary subject: the bare outline of a cat.