Will Dyson and Peggy Bacon had exhibitions in Manhattan galleries last week. Critics all over town began talking about Daumier, for though the U. S. pays its humorous artists better than any other country, U. S. satirists of intelligence, with real technical ability, are as rare as good deeds.
Peggy Bacon, a slant-chinned young woman with a keen eye, a quick brain, confined her satire at the Downtown Galleries last week largely to the critics and dealers of the New York art world. Shrewdly drawn pastels in good color showed Colyumist Heywood Broun towering like a huge bundle of dirty linen over a frail typewriter; Critic Royal Cortissoz (Herald Tribune) scowling over his goatee and cigar at a modernist painting; Murdock Pemberton (New Yorker) bilious in a blue suit; dimple-chinned Henry McBride (Sun) delicately balancing a teacup; and dozens more.
Critic Margaret Bruening (Evening Post), who was not caricatured, found the pastels "handsome portraits which are actually flattering to the sitters." With Machiavellian cunning, Satirist . Bacon who is far from ugly caricatured herself more cruelly (see cut) than she did any of the critics.
Probably an abler artist than Peggy Bacon is William Henry Dyson of England who hung more of his brilliantly bitten etchings at the Ferargil Galleries last week. Grey-haired, slender and 48. he was born in Ballarat, Australia, still speaks with a rich bush-twang. He emerged from the War a witty cynic with an artistic manner reminiscent of Beerbohm the Exquisite, but with an even surer command of line. Possibly to make the Beerbohm parallel less marked he adopted etching as his medium two years ago. Like Max, half the effect of his pictures is in the written cap tions that accompany them: A satanic gargoyle looking down on New York says, "Ah well, one lives and learns, one lives and learns." Jehovah being berated by melancholy Thomas Hardy for creating such an imperfect Universe, apologizes meekly: "Ah, Mr. Hardy, if you only knew all the circumstances!"
Once described as "a bitter cynic who etches plates with the acid of his own bile," Will Dyson is personally the height of amiability. He beamed last week at a group of reporters (female): "
Just put me down as a handsome fella with the beautiful brown eyes of a spaniel."