Lot 12
PEGI NICOL MACLEOD
Additional Images
Provenance:
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, QC
Private Collection, Toronto, ON
Note:
Pegi Nicol MacLeod moved to New York in 1937. Mounted Police on City Street, N.Y. captures the grittiness and vitality of the New York streets and everyday life that she is emblematic of her oeuvre. Perhaps a view from her window, an oblique perspective gives the viewer a sidelong glimpse of the busy street, filtered through a quintessentially New York fire escape. This is no stylized postcard, but rather an unvarnished, almost documentary representation.
A favoured subject matter was the crowded street -- figures spilling out of the canvas painted with vibrant colours and strong, assured strokes and curving lines. MacLeod applied for a fellowship at the Guggenheim Foundation in 1942 and again in 1943, where she wished for “an unencumbered year of day in day out painting of New York City subjects...the push-carts, the ice-man, the flower wagon, the open markets, and the hand-ball games.”1 It is this commitment to painting with an unwavering gaze that made her such a vital force in the canon of modern Canadian art. MacLeod observes her surroundings with fierce vitality and captures the reality of the world as it is.
MacLeod gave birth to her daughter Jane the same year she moved to New York. On the reverse of this work is a painting of a little girl, likely Jane, sucking on her thumb. Jane was a frequent subject for MacLeod - in a letter dated 1944, she wrote “I have come to the place where I must paint my daughter or bust.”
Here she is nestled under a blanket, with an alternate view of her in the background, almost like a vision in a dream.
1Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Guggenheim Fellowship Applications, 1942 and 1943
CONDITION DETAILS
The work is in very good condition with a minor condition issue. Please contact us for a detailed condition report.
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