The Bridge Party
Peggy Bacon (1895-1987), drypoint, The Bridge Party, signed, dated (Nov. 1918) and titled (Bridge) in pencil by the artist. On laid paper, Flint 3. In generally ok but rough condition as befits an early working proof pulled by Bacon herself, with diagonal folds upper and lower right, with margins (1/2 inch top and sides, 1 inch bottom, pencil mark right margin. 4 1/8 x 5 inches, archival mounting.
A very fine impression of this rarity (weve seen only one other impression in 30 years). In this early impression, the burr from the drypoint work creates a brilliant satiny black.
This print is based on a scene at The Elms, an inn at Ridgefield Connecticut, owned by the artist’s mother. Janet Flint wrote of The Bridge Party: Even in her first drypoints Bacon exhibited a skill in building effective compositions. She played off the mass of the heavyset man in stark black and white, who sits solidly in the lower right corner, against two smaller people in half-tones at left center, actively joining the four players with the trapezoidal table top. The dramatic use of a full range of light and dark forces the light figures from the dark background with baroque insistence.
Bacon was influenced by the new modernist/cubist movements in art in her earliest prints; The Bridge Party is one of her finest efforts working in this idiom.