Portland Press Herald: See the world from artist Peggy Bacon’s satirical view at 2 shows in Maine
The 20th-century caricature artist, whose work appeared in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, spent the end of her life in southern Maine.
September 1, 2024
By Megan Gray
Originally appears in The Portland Press Herald. Read it here
Peggy Bacon was enrolled at the Art Students League in New York when she discovered drypoint, but not because she took a class on the printmaking technique. She found the equipment in the school’s basement and taught herself. The process involves carving with a needle onto a metal printing plate, rather than a layer of soft wax.
“I never cottoned to drawing in wax,” she once said. “But I loved digging in.”
Now, two exhibitions in Maine are digging into her work.
Bacon was a 20th-century caricaturist, illustrator, printmaker, painter, writer and educator. She moved to Cape Porpoise in 1961 and died in Kennebunkport in 1987, and still has family in the state. The Portland Museum of Art has mounted a solo show that in particular highlights the work of her early career, when she honed the satirical style that landed her work in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. At the same time, a gallery in Wiscasset has unearthed a box of hundreds of never-before-seen sketches, including some that likely informed pieces now on the walls of the museum.
Both aim to reintroduce a woman who documented the world with a keen eye and a sense of humor.
“A lot of folks who study American art or Maine art, they know her, they love her,” said Ramey Mize, associate curator of American art at the Portland Museum of Art. “But I think for a broader cultural context, she is totally unknown. I wanted to remedy that with this exhibition and reinvigorate public interest in her because I think there’s so much to love about her and be in awe of – her versatility, her incredible appetite for every form of art, seemingly, and her incredible sharp wit. This was a bold, fierce voice.”
AN IMPULSE FOR AMUSEMENT
Bacon was born in Connecticut in 1895. Her parents, Charles Roswell Bacon and Elizabeth Chase Bacon, were also artists. Starting in 1915, she studied at the Art Students League in New York City. Her first caricatures appeared in a satirical student magazine called Bad News in 1918. (Visitors to the exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art can see an original copy under glass, as well as replicas to read more closely.)
Her instructors there included artists John Sloan and George Bellows, who founded the “Ashcan School,” a movement that portrayed the grit of everyday life. Mize said Bacon shared that interested in documentation; she would take her metal plates to the school’s cafeteria, so she could record the scene there. Bacon often portrayed crowds, filling the surface of her print or drawing with people. But Bacon also had a robust sense of humor that informed her work and once described her perspective this way: “I wanted to set down as much as I could of life around me. … What amused me was important. That was my impulse.”
“She was endlessly fascinated by our shared humanity, the whimsy and hilarity and absurdity that we all carry with us and experience every day,” Mize said.
Not long before, women had not been allowed to sketch nude models, a cornerstone of art education nevertheless deemed inappropriate for their eyes. Mize said Bacon’s generation did have access to figure drawing, but the relatively recent debate is apparent in her work. One example of this is “Frenzied Effort (The Whitney Studio Club)” (1925), a scene from a rare co-ed drawing class. (Spot Bacon herself if you can.) Mize said one of her personal favorites in the show is a print called “Lady Artist” (1925), which depicts Bacon working on a plate in the window of her home studio as onlookers from the surrounding apartments gawk. The reference sketch on her desk is a reclining female nude, Mize noted, but a close observer will see that she is drawing a cat instead.
“That’s so sly because she’s just sidestepping all the art world stereotypes,” Mize said. “She chooses herself and her own instincts here but is always, of course, mindful of the context she finds herself in.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, Bacon gained critical recognition for her satirical sketches of celebrities. New York World-Telegram writer Howard Cushman wrote in 1931, “Her caricature is biting but never bitter,” which inspired the title of the show at the Portland Museum of Art. In 1934, she published a collection titled “Off with Their Heads!” – caricatures of 39 notable people of the day, such as Franklin Roosevelt, Georgia O’Keefe, Diego Rivera and even Bacon herself.
“It’s laughing with you,” Mize said. “Never at you.”
A ‘TREASURE TROVE’
Drypoint was her best-known medium, but Bacon had an expansive career. She illustrated more than 60 books, including 20 that she wrote. Later, she worked more in pastel and paint. She married the artist Alexander Brook in 1920, and they were together for 20 years and had two children before they divorced in 1940. She often visited artist colonies in the Northeast, and she first came to Ogunquit in 1938. Bacon lived in Maine from 1961 until her death in 1987 at age 91.
Ben Rawlingson Plant is a consultant and art historian who has worked in communications for museums such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He now lives in Arrowsic and first learned of Bacon during a visit to Trifles, an antique store in Wiscasset. He found a drawing of hers in a box there and brought it home for his wall. When he learned that the Portland Museum of Art was planning a show of her work, he returned to Helen Robinson, a friend and the store’s owner. They dug out the box for a closer look and found 800-odd drawings there.
“It was phenomenal,” he said. “One of those once-in-a-lifetime boxes you open up. A treasure trove.”
Rawlingson Plant said Robinson’s late husband bought the box at an estate sale, but it sat untouched for years. He and Robinson decided to stage a show in the Gallery at Trifles to coincide with the one at the museum.
The works are mostly pencil or ink, sketches of people doing chores or children playing. Some are frayed at the edges or show their age, so they are also working to frame and preserve the hundreds of pages. The box also contained a sketchbook with 140 drawings.
“When I finally got around to opening the boxes a few months ago, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only were there vast quantities of works from the artist, but the depth and range of her art is really awe-inspiring – she never stopped looking and drawing,” Robinson said in a news release about the show. “I’m really pleased to finally be able to show these precious works and help raise the profile of a brilliant female artist, who ended her days here in Maine.”
Rawlingson Plant described the drawings as “deeply touching” and “just hilarious.” He noted some relate to larger finished works on display at the Portland Museum of Art. For example, the drawings at Trifles include silly sketches of people looking at art – a woman studying a painting with binoculars, a man with a befuddled expression. The Portland Museum of Art has drypoint print in its collection titled “Aesthetic Pleasure” (1936), a humorous depiction of American tourists in Florence’s Pitti Palace, gawking or yawning or sneering at the art in the gallery.
The drawings are for sale, and Rawlingson Plant said the prices start at $200. The small gallery has 70 or so on display and is continuing to replace them with additional drawings as they sell.
“You really can feel like you’re in the thick of Peggy’s world,” he said.
A FAMILY TRADITION
When Eben Brook was sick as a child, his mother would bring him to his grandmother’s house nearby in Cape Porpoise. Bacon would rub his back and read to him from one of the children’s books she authored and illustrated. His favorite was “The Ghost of Opalina,” a story about a ghost cat sharing the stories of its nine lives with the children who live in an old house. Bacon loved cats, which feature heavily in her art, and Brook remembers her feeding hers canned mackerel. He remembers her cross-stitching and teaching young local girls (including his future wife, Helena) how to sew. He liked to attend the lessons, even though he was the only boy, because she always had cookies.
“She was just very grandmotherly and a very loving presence,” he said. “I loved being there.”
Brook, 68, is a builder, but the family has always had artists. One is his daughter, Shea Brook, who studied fine art and art history at the University of Maine Orono and later received a master’s in art education at the Maine College of Art and Design in Portland. Today, she teaches art in Saco and has her own studio practice. She is primarily a painter, and her style is quite different from Bacon’s, but she still felt her great-grandmother’s influence.
“Waking up and looking at art every day that’s all from family definitely influenced me,” Brook said. “I always found her work to be more comical and lighthearted versus other artists in my family who took things a little bit more seriously in their content. What I love about her work is that she never held anything back of what she saw or what she felt. Even with her own husband, she made a funny caricature of him.”
The family was excited about the shows in Maine this summer and has visited the exhibition at the museum already. Shea Brook, 35, said her own practice slowed during the pandemic and with the birth of her son, but she is currently working on a new series and hopes to show her paintings again soon. She is currently working on a scene of the Portland Lobster Company. Her 3-year-old loves to watch her paint, perhaps a sign that he will take up the family tradition someday.
“I’m hoping to keep it going,” she said.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Peggy Bacon: Biting, Never Bitter”
WHERE: Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square
WHEN: Through Feb. 2
HOURS: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; open until 8 p.m. Friday
INFO: portlandmuseum.org or 207-775-6148
WHAT: “Peggy Bacon Comes to Life”
WHERE: The Gallery at Trifles, 55 Main St., Wiscasset
WHEN: Through Sept. 27
HOURS: Trifles is typically open noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Closed Sept. 3 and 4.
INFO: For an appointment, call Helen Robinson at 207-522-5682.