In Holland Cotter’s August 5th New York Times review of our Peggy Bacon & Her Circle show, he referred to the “distinctly geeky male students lurking in the background” of Bacon’s 1918 drypoint, Lunch at the League. Bacon puts herself and two friends, Dorothy Varian and Doris Rosenthal, in the print as well.

Actually, he began “Historically, one of the most ephemeral aspects of art is the social environment that generates it, the networks of artists coming together and drifting apart.”

Three of the League’s (and Bacon’s) teachers are represented: George Bellows, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. Cotter wrote “Their brand of everyday-people realism clearly rubbed off on their students, who made it their own in varying ways. In her etchings Isabel Bishop managed to make even caricature look refined, as she does in the 1946 Tidying Up.” He also pointed out a “remarkable depiction of childbirth as a kind of Titian-esque allegory” by Minna Citron; and a portrait of the photographer Rosalie Hook, by Alexander Brook. Hook was the wife of Robert Gwathmey; Brook was the husband of Peggy Bacon.

In conclusion Cotter wrote, “All of the colleagues in the circle traced here are now gone, though shows like this ensure that their link with history, however slender, will not be broken.”

Naturally we could not be more pleased.

The show is on view through August 18,  2011.

Link to the show on the Gallery Site:

http://www.susantellergallery.com/cgi/STG_exh.pl