Women in Greenwich Village, N.Y.C., 1940, circa 1940

Family of the Artist

Laura Brandon, “Pegi by Herself: The Life of Pegi Nicol MacLeod”, Canadian Artist, Montreal/Kingston, 2005, pages 103 and 124

In early 1937, Pegi Nicol MacLeod moved with her husband from Toronto to New York. Expecting their first child, the couple hoped to benefit from the slowly improving economic conditions of the New Deal period. Experimenting with repetitive forms and loose, expressive brushwork, MacLeod was directly influenced by the lively bustle and energy of city life. Writing to her friend Madge Smith in 1941, the artist commented, “I have attacked my view from the window. Its [sic] a little beyond one who has neglected landscape for years. Yesterday I was below in the street just painting up and down it whatever happened by…” She could not “get used to having acquired a new world. It gives me endless pleasure.” The city’s many galleries and museums also offered rich artistic stimulation. MacLeod took a keen interest in the work of several photographers, including Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand. Writer Laura Brandon noted, “She learned much from the immediacy and the multi-layered images that a photographer could achieve… The multiple views of the same scene and the sense of movement … show her indebtedness to film and photographic techniques.” Pegi experimented with what she described as “kaleidoscope vision”, packing her compositions with condensed figures depicted with repetitive, undulating lines. These echoing forms create a dynamic feeling of energy and movement, perfectly suited to the depiction of life in Greenwich Village. Her quick rendering and thinly scumbled surfaces effectively enhance the immediacy of the scene.