Lucy Angeline Bacon (July 30, 1857 – October 17, 1932) was a

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

n artist known for her California Impressionist oil paintings of florals, landscapes and still lifes. She studied in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

under the Impressionist

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...

. She is the only known Californian artist to have studied under any of the great French

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

Early life and education

Born in 1857 in

Pitcairn, New York Pitcairn is a town in St. Lawrence County, New York, United States. The population was 846 at the 2010 census. The name is from that of Joseph Pitcairn, an early landowner and diplomat. The Town of Pitcairn is in the southwestern part of the cou ...

. Bacon graduated by 1879 from the Potsdam Normal School in New York. She was related to Robert K. Vickery, through the marriage of her niece Ruth. In the 1890s, his father was a part-owner of a San Franciscan gallery,

Vickery, Atkins & Torrey Vickery, Atkins & Torrey was an interior design firm and art gallery in San Francisco, California, that helped introduce California to Impressionism. It opened in 1888 on Grant Avenue at Morton Street (now called Maiden Lane), where it was destro ...

, the first gallery to exhibit the Impressionism in San Francisco. Bacon studied in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school at American Fine Arts Society, 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists ...

and the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

. In 1892 she left for

to continue her studies at the Académie Colarossi. She then studied with

, as advised by American painter

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar De ...

Career

She then moved to Éragny and made Impressionist paintings. By 1898, she lived in San Jose and was exhibiting paintings such as ''A San Jose Garden'' at the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Art Association. She moved to California in the hope of improving chronic illness which limited her ability to paint. She taught at Washburn Preparatory School in San Jose and painted from her home studio. In the spring of 1902, her works were exhibited at the

Mark Hopkins Institute of Art San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

in San Francisco. In 1905, while Lucy Bacon renounced her painting career and devoted herself to the

Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally know ...

religion, possibly finding it eased her health problems, and she continued to teach art. By 1909, she was living in San Francisco. Lucy Bacon was a member of the Indian Fair Committee of the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs (NMAIA) and Eastern Association on Indian Affairs (EAIA) in 1927, which exhibited works by Native American artists. She died in San Francisco in 1932. Her painting, ''Garden Landscape'' made between 1894 and 1896, is among the collection of the

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...

Gallery

File:Lucy Bacon, Garden Landscape, 1894-1896, Fine Art Museum of San Francisco.jpg, Garden Landscape (ca. 1984–1896) File:Gennevilliers - Lucy Bacon ~1895.JPG, Gennevilliers (c. 1895), made when she was studying under Camille Pissaro.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bacon, Lucy Angeline 1857 births 1932 deaths 19th-century American painters 20th-century American painters American women painters American Impressionist painters Artists from San Jose, California Artists from San Francisco Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area Painters from California 20th-century American women artists 19th-century American women artists Académie Colarossi alumni American expatriates in France

Early life and education

Career

Gallery

See also

References