Painted by Beck when she was in her mid-70s, the “Phaedra" cycle was the last of her great mythological cycles. Beck had retired as a Professor of Art at Queens College in 1990, however, when she was invited to join the faculty of the New York Studio School a few years later, she could not resist the opportunity to resume teaching. Teaching had always been a nourishing and enlivening activity that acted as an energizing, propulsive force behind her painting practice, and so it proved to be in Beck's elder years.
The tragedy of Phaedra, based on a play by Euripides, is the means by which Beck framed the series’ primary figures: Phaedra’s Nurse and the Attendants. These latter working women - a nod to the foreground figures in "The Spinners" by her venerated master, Velazquez - busily adorn the walls around their queen with large bolts of cloth, as if to mark out the space as female territory. These women are always on their feet, engaged in physical labor that seems incidental to the drama playing out in their midst. Yet their omnipresent activity cannot be ignored. The image of a woman handling cloth with professional skill inevitably leads us back to Beck herself, a woman who demonstrates assured mastery of the wrought canvas, whether painted or sewn.
