Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Peggy
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Here Neel swapped the "portrait" format she generally preferred for a horizontal canvas, with the intention of accommodating, perhaps, the spread of her sitter’s bone-thin arms, which frame a face distorted by emotional and physical trauma. Peggy was a victim of domestic abuse, as Neel recalled, and the artist, who had long been committed to the cause of social justice for women, chose to represent her as such, capturing the abrasions and bruises left by her boyfriend’s most recent assault. Peggy’s left hand, its fingers bent and twisted, is a study in the way tension is held in the body.
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