Peggy Bacon

Margaret Frances Bacon (May 2, 1895 – January 4, 1987) was an American artist, best known for her satirical caricatures.

Bacon studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League of New York, where she taught herself drypoint and published her first caricatures in the student magazine. They soon appeared in publications such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, as well as major art galleries. Bacon earned many awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in the graphic arts.

Early life and education

Bacon was born on May 2, 1895, in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to Charles Roswell Bacon and Elizabeth Chase Bacon. She was the first of three children but raised an only child after her two younger brothers died in infancy. Bacon's parents were both artists and met while attending the Art Students League in New York. Her father, an errand boy for Tiffany's during his childhood, painted landscapes and figures in adulthood while her mother was a miniaturist. Both of her parents were very well read; they loved reading Henry James and would read aloud as a family every evening.

From an early age, Bacon displayed an interest in art. It is said she first started to draw at the age of eighteen months. In her adolescent years she added illustrations and poetry to her letters to family and wrote and illustrated books for her parents Christmas and birthday presents. Between the ages of 9 and 11 Bacon lived with her parents in France, first in Paris and then in a house in Picardy at Montreaux-sur-Mer. In the fall of 1914 and spring of 1915, Bacon took a private course with Lie, studying gouache and watercolor. Impressed with her work, Lie put on Bacon's first solo exhibition in his studio. Lie matted, hung, and priced the small paintings and invited one hundred friends to see them. Although the show received few, if any, critical reviews, it sold out, and the proceeds financed Peggy’s first year of study at the Art Students League in 1915-16” Around 1917 Bacon also became interested in printmaking and taught herself drypoint as there was no one teaching etching at the Art Students League at the time. After marrying, Bacon and Brook moved to London for a year, where their daughter, Belinda, was born. She went on to illustrate over 60 books, 19 of which she also wrote, including a successful mystery book, The Inward Eye, which was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1952 for best novel. Bacon's popular drawings appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, New Republic, Fortune, and Vanity Fair and she exhibited in galleries and museums frequently. During her time as a fellow she completed 35 satirical portraits of art world figures for a collection called Off With Their Heads!, which was published that same year by Robert M. McBride & Company. In 1947, Bacon was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1969. In December 1975, the National Collection of Fine Arts, now the National Museum of American Art, honored Bacon with a yearlong retrospective exhibition titled, "Peggy Bacon: Personalities and Places." Bacon was also a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists and participated in many of their annual exhibitions.

In addition to her artistic career, Bacon taught extensively during the 1930s and 1940s at various institutions, including the Fieldston School, the Art Students League, Hunter College, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and summers at the School of Music and Art in Stowe, Vermont. While Bacon was known for her caricatures, she stopped creating these works after 1935 because of the negative reactions she received from her subjects. Oftentimes, she was commissioned to create satirical portraits of people who were often unwilling to sit for her and "after she had captured their likenesses by some means, complained bitterly about what she had done to them”

From April 28, 2001 – September 2, 2001, the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited The World of Peggy Bacon, displaying drawings and prints of hers.

From June 27, 2012, to November 4, 2012, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture exhibited Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon. The exhibit traced her associations using photographs, letters, graphics, and archival documents from the Archives of American Art to illustrate Bacon’s connection to dozens of other prominent artists.

From June 14, 2024 to February 2, 2025, the Portland Museum of Art exhibited "Peggy Bacon: Biting, never Bitter." The exhibit examined "wry observations of her social, professional, and artistic networks during the 1920s and 1930s."