{"data":{"id":"44","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":44,"topgoose_id":2701,"tms_id":44,"display_name":"Peggy Bacon","sort_name":"Bacon Peggy","display_date":"1895–1987","begin_date":"1895","end_date":"1987","biography":"\u003cp\u003eThroughout her work as an artist, illustrator, and writer, Peggy Bacon affectionately satirized the early twentieth-century art world of New York. From 1915 to 1920, she honed her precocious talents at the Art Students League, where her artist parents first met. Influenced by the life drawing classes of \u003ca href=\"/artists/1229\"\u003eJohn Sloan\u003c/a\u003e, who encouraged his students to capture the everyday details around them, she began to sketch caricatures of her artist colleagues—a practice she continued through the 1930s. Though initially trained as a painter, in 1917 Bacon taught herself drypoint, a steel-pen etching technique that would become her primary medium for a decade. She developed a style remarkable for its tonal variation and its use of sketchlike marks such as cross-hatching, and quickly gained prominence as a printmaker (she began showing her prints at the Whitney Studio Club in 1925).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/3541\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Ardent Bowlers\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e demonstrates Bacon’s drypoint skills and her ability to capture her social milieu with wit and precision. Set in a bowling alley on Third Avenue, the scene depicts a weekly social gathering of artists associated with the Woodstock circle, to which Bacon and her husband belonged. The composition is characteristically crammed with figures; yet, as Bacon explained of those depicted in her work, “every one of the people was a portrait of a particular individual.” Bacon sits center foreground, turned to the right in conversation with another woman; the artist \u003ca href=\"/artists/841\"\u003eReginald Marsh\u003c/a\u003e is seated at far left. In spite of the dramatic perspectival recession of the bowling lanes beyond, the raucous crowd dominates our field of vision. We, like the bowlers, are drawn into the social dynamics of the group, who are clearly more engaged in one another’s company than the sport at hand.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500024574","wikidata_id":"Q7160630","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:33:14.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T07:04:57.650-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/44/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/44/exhibitions"}}}}