Isabel Bishop (March 3, 1902 – February 19, 1988) was an American painter and graphic artist. Bishop studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League of New York, where she would later become an instructor. She was most notable for her scenes of everyday life in Manhattan, as a member of the loosely-defined ‘Fourteenth Street School’ of artists, grouped in that precinct. Union Square features prominently in her work, which mainly depicts female figures. Bishop’s paintings won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, among other distinctions.
Bishop was born the youngest of five siblings in Cincinnati, Ohio.[1] Founders of a prep school in Princeton, New Jersey, her parents were highly educated individuals and descendants from East coast mercantile families. Though the family descended from old wealth, their immediate status was of the middle class, and financial insecurity forced the family to move often. Bishop spent her childhood years in Detroit, Michigan. In every new city the Bishop family would move to, John, Isabel's father, would become involved with a local school. Oftentimes becoming the principal or eventually owning the school.[2] Bishop compared growing up and moving around with her parents to be like being an only child, because her siblings were fifteen plus years older than her and didn't live with her family at the time.[3]
Her father was a scholar of Greek and Latin. Her siblings, two sets of twins, were older than her by well over a decade. One set of twins, a boy and a girl, were twelve years older; the other set of twins, also a boy and girl, were fifteen years old at the time of her birth. Her mother was emotionally indifferent and distant from Bishop; she was a suffragist, feminist and aspiring writer who urged her daughters to become independent, strong women.[2] After the family relocated to Detroit, Bishop began her art education at the age of 12 in a Saturday morning life drawing class at the John Wicker Art School in Detroit.[4]
Bishop was described as an eager intellectual who was naturally inquisitive and independent in her ways. In this period, women were becoming very active in the arts community, yet were still taken for granted. Bishop pushed against this attitude toward women artists with her insistence on applying herself both academically and politically in the art realm. Throughout her educational ventures, she was fully funded by her father's cousin, James Bishop Ford, who aided her family in their time of need. Writing on this financial sponsorship, Isabel Bishop states that she viewed her gender as an advantage: "I was lucky. I think if I had been a man the relative who sponsored my whole studenthood might not have done so. Men are supposed to make their own way. Young women were supposed to marry. But a young woman putting so much time and effort—being so serious—that was different—that interested him. I don't think he would have subsidized me if I had been a boy."[2]
Career
For the first time that she taught at The Art Students League in New York, she was the only full time woman teacher in that school.[8]
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s she developed a realist style of painting, primarily depicting women in their daily routine on the streets of Manhattan. Her work was greatly influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and other Dutch and Flemish painters that she had discovered during trips to Europe. In 1932, Bishop began showing her work frequently at the newly opened Midtown Galleries, where her work would be represented throughout her career.[9] Bishop takes inspiration from Rubens by adding a light ochre-ish tone to all her works, allowing for the painting to be rendered in any way.[10]
In 1934, Bishop married Dr. Harold G. Wolff, a neurologist, and moved to Riverdale New York. However, she continued to work in a loft studio near Union Square at 9 West Fourteenth St, which she continued to use until 1984.[11] She became interested in the interaction of form and ground and the mobility of everyday life, what she called "unfixity", life and movement captured on canvas.[11] Her style is noted for its sensitive modeling of form and "a submarine pearliness and density of atmosphere".[12] During this time, Bishop began working in various printing techniques, most notably aquatint.
In 1938, she painted a post office mural, Great Men Came from the Hills, in New Lexington, Ohio, through the Section of Painting and Sculpture.[14] According to the Ohio Historical Society, “In Isabel Bishop’s mural for New Lexington, historic personages from the town admire their achievements across the valley, where we see the forms and silhouettes of distant buildings. The artist, from New York City, discovered that the townspeople were proud of the distinguished people who came from Perry County. She included a Revolutionary soldier, a governor of Wisconsin, a founder of New Lexington and his grandson, an author of reference books on Ohio, the developer of the coal industry, a senator, a newspaperman, a naturalist, the county’s first historian, and General Sheridan.”[15]
Bishop's mature works mainly depict the inhabitants of New York's Union Square area. Her portraits are often studies of individual heads (see Laughing Head, 1938, Butler Institute of American Art); the emphasis securely on the subject's expression – or of solitary nudes. Bishop also painted multiple-figure compositions, often containing two females engaged in various workday interactions. In the post-war years, Bishop's interest turned to more abstracted scenes of New Yorkers walking and traveling, in the streets or on the subways. Her signature changed many times over her career, ranging from the use of various pseudonyms to initials; some early pieces are signed I.B, or I. Bishop in both block and script. Her work remains significant as an example of the thematic concerns of the Fourteenth St. School, as well as her contribution to feminism and the "new woman" emerging in urban landscapes. The "Fourteenth Street School," was a loosely affiliated group named for the area around Union Square, where Bishop, Reginald Marsh, and the brothers Raphael Soyer and Moses Soyer worked.
In the mid-1940s, E. P. Dutton commissioned Bishop to illustrate a new edition of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. Bishop produced 31 pen-and-ink drawings (the originals are now at the Pierpont Morgan Library).
The first retrospective exhibition of Bishop's work was held during her lifetime at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1974.[16]
Awards
In 1943, Bishop was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.[17]
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter presented her with the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award.[17]
In 1987, she received a Gold Medal for Painting by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[17]
Notable works
Virgil and Dante in Union Square, 1932, Oil on canvas, Delaware Art Museum
This piece hung in Bishop's Riverdale home for more than seven years, and set the leitmotif of her career.[18] As a child, Bishop became familiar with the story of Virgil and Dante through her mother, who was translating the text from Italian. Dante's journey through heaven and hell represented the extraordinary depth to life and its many experiences. The two figures standing in front of Union Square adds a narrative element to the bustling scene of life in a city of millions, and sets the scene for her various paintings and prints of urban life.
Two Girls, 1935, Oil and tempera on Masonite, Metropolitan Museum of Art
One of Bishop's most well-known works, the painting took more than a year to complete and was shown at the Midtown Galleries.[19] For the piece, Bishop had two acquaintances from the Union Square area pose, wanting to capture the interaction of the two figures. The piece was painted with oil and tempera.
Encounter, 1940, Oil and tempera on Masonite, St Louis Art Museum
In Encounter, Bishop continues with her multiple-figure compositions capturing a scene of interaction between a man and a woman on a city street. Her depiction of the woman as forthright and confident, approaching the man and backing him against a wall, exemplifies Bishop's understanding of shifting gender roles at the time.
Tidying Up, 1941, Oil on Masonite, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Tidying Up depicts a young female office worker in the midst of checking her teeth in a compact mirror. The ungainly image of self-inspection accords with Bishop's realism and her interest in the daily lives of working women. The rough brushstrokes and surface texture exhibit an interest in old master paintings.
Exhibitions
Isabel Bishop: exhibition of paintings and drawings, Jan. 17-Feb. 4. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1939.
Isabel Bishop: February 11-February 29. New York: Midtown Galleries, [1940?]
Bishop. May 3–May 21, 1949. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1949.
Bishop, Paintings and Drawings, Oct. 25-Nov. 19, 1955. New York: Midtown Galleries, [1955]
Isabel Bishop. March 7-March 30, 1960. New York City: Midtown Galleries, 1960.
Isabel Bishop. May 3–May 28, 1960. Midtown Galleries, 1960
Isabel Bishop. April 4–29, 1967. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1967.
Paintings by Isabel Bishop. Sculpture by Dorothea Greenbaum. [Exhibition] May 2–July 5, 1970. Trenton: New Jersey State Museum, 1970.
Isabel Bishop: A Selection of Drawings and Prints. January 8–February 2, 1974. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1974.
Isabel Bishop. Tucson: University of Arizona Museum of Art, 1974.
The Lydia and Warren Chappell Collection of Drawings and Prints by Isabel Bishop. April 12–May 18, 1975. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Art Museum, 1975.
Isabel Bishop, Drawings and Etchings. December 5–30, 1978. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1978.
Isabel Bishop Exhibition—A Fifty Year Drawing Retrospective and Recent Paintings. October 6–31, 1981. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1981.
Isabel Bishop, An Intimate Exhibition: Work of the Past Five Years. February 1–26, 1983. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1983.
Isabel Bishop: Drawings - Paintings. January 8–February 2, 1985. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1985.
Isabel Bishop: Across Five Decades - The Affectionate Eye - March, 1985.[20]
Isabel Bishop: Etchings and Aquatints, 1985.
Isabel Bishop: A Retrospective of Prints and Drawings. November 5–26, 1985. Associated American Artists, 1985.
Isabel Bishop: Early Drawings. December 9, 1986 – January 17, 1987. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1986.
Isabel Bishop. May 16–30, 1991. Beverly Hills: Louis Newman Galleries, 1991.
Isabel Bishop: Walking Pictures. October 13–November 14, 1992. New York: Midtown Payson Galleries, 1992.
Isabel Bishop: Drawings. April 7–May 2, 1998. New York: DC Moore Gallery, 1998.
Isabel Bishop, 1902–1988: A Selection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints. September 5–October 5, 2013. New York: DC Moore Gallery, 2013.
Women's Work: Selections from the Sordoni Art Gallery Permanent Collection. June 5–July 27, 2014. Wilkes-Barre: Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, 2014.
Bibliography
Books
Brooklyn Museum. Isabel Bishop--Prints and Drawings, 1925–1964. Brooklyn: The Museum, 1964.
Ellett, Mary Sweeney. “Isabel Bishop—The Endless Search.” Ph.D diss. University of Virginia, 1987.
Lunde, Karl. Isabel Bishop. New York: Abrams, 1975.
Nemser, Cindy. Art Talk: Conversations with 15 Women Artists. New York: IconEditions, 1995. Pages 303–320.
Teller, Susan. Isabel Bishop—Etchings and Aquatints: a catalogue raisonné. 2nd ed. New York: Associated American Artists, 1985.
Todd, Ellen Wiley. The "New Woman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Chapter 7, pages 55–62.
Yglesias, Helen. Isabel Bishop. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.
Articles
Ellett, Mary S. “Isabel Bishop: The Endless Search.” Southeastern College Art Conference Review 11,no. 2 (Spring 1987): 165–166.
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer, "American Scene and Realist Painting: Isabel Bishop." American Women Artists: From Early Indian Times to the Present. Boston: G.K. Jall & Co., 1982
Todd, Ellen Wiley. “Isabel Bishop—Our Modern Master?” Woman's Art Journal 13 (Spring/Summer 1992): 45–47.
Wooden, Howard. "Art Feature: Isabel Bishop's Self-Portrait. Wichita Art Museum News (April 1988).
The Isabel Bishop Papers, 1914-1983 have been digitized and posted online by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. These primary source historical documents include biographical documents, correspondence, writings and notes, exhibition catalogs, photographs of Bishop with her husband and in her studio, original artwork including 8 sketchbooks, loose sketches, prints, and watercolor figure studies.
The American indie rock band Unrest released an EP named the Isabel Bishop E.P. in 1993, with Bishop's picture on the cover.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures.
Minna Wright Citron was an American painter and printmaker. Her early prints focus on the role of women, sometimes in a satirical manner, in a style known as urban realism.
Betty Parsons was an American artist, art dealer, and collector known for her early promotion of Abstract Expressionism. She is regarded as one of the most influential and dynamic figures of the American avant-garde.
Ghada Amer is a contemporary artist, much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality. Her most notable body of work involves highly layered embroidered paintings of women's bodies referencing pornographic imagery.
Miriam Schapiro was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pattern and Decoration art movement. Schapiro's artwork blurs the line between fine art and craft. She incorporated craft elements into her paintings due to their association with women and femininity. Schapiro's work touches on the issue of feminism and art: especially in the aspect of feminism in relation to abstract art. Schapiro honed in her domesticated craft work and was able to create work that stood amongst the rest of the high art. These works represent Schapiro's identity as an artist working in the center of contemporary abstraction and simultaneously as a feminist being challenged to represent women's "consciousness" through imagery. She often used icons that are associated with women, such as hearts, floral decorations, geometric patterns, and the color pink. In the 1970s she made the hand fan, a typically small woman's object, heroic by painting it six feet by twelve feet. "The fan-shaped canvas, a powerful icon, gave Schapiro the opportunity to experiment … Out of this emerged a surface of textured coloristic complexity and opulence that formed the basis of her new personal style. The kimono, fans, houses, and hearts were the form into which she repeatedly poured her feelings and desires, her anxieties, and hopes".
Mildred Jean Thompson was an American artist who worked in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. Critics have related her art to West African textiles and Islamic architecture; they have also cited German Expressionism, music and Thompson's readings in astronomy, spiritualism and metaphysics as important artistic influences. She also wrote and was an associate editor for the magazine Art Papers.
Janet Fish is a contemporary American realist artist. Through oil painting, lithography, and screenprinting, she explores the interaction of light with everyday objects in the still life genre. Many of her paintings include elements of transparency, reflected light, and multiple overlapping patterns depicted in bold, high color values. She has been credited with revitalizing the still life genre.
Marjorie Virginia Strider was an American painter, sculptor and performance artist best known for her three-dimensional paintings and site-specific soft sculpture installations.
Howardena Pindell is an American artist, curator, and educator. She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation. She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, "video drawings," and "process art."
Tidying Up is an oil painting by American artist Isabel Bishop. It is currently in the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Mary Fife Laning was an American painter and wife of artist Edward Laning.
Agnes Tait (1894–1981) was an American painter, pen-and-ink artist, lithographer, book illustrator, muralist and dancer.
Agnes Weinrich (1873–1946) was an American visual artist. In the early twentieth century, she played a critical role in introducing cubist theory to American artists, collectors, and the general public and became one of the first American abstractionists. A life-long proponent of modernist art, she was an active participant in the art communities of Provincetown and New York. Early in her career, she traveled widely in Europe and spent extended periods studying in Paris and Berlin. She also studied art in Chicago, Provincetown, and New York. During most of her career, she worked in a Provincetown studio during the warm months and a Manhattan studio during the cold ones. Weinrich's easel work included oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels. She also made block prints and etchings and drew using pencil and crayon. Her paintings, prints, and drawings appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout her career and she received favorable critical attention both during her life and after her death.
Sarah Stilwell Weber was an American illustrator who studied at Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle. She illustrated books and national magazines, like The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, and The Century Magazine.
Katherine Schmidt was an American artist and art activist. Early in her career the figure studies, landscapes, and still lifes she painted drew praise for their "purity and clarity of color," "sound draftsmanship," and "individual choice of subject and its handling." During the 1930s she was known mainly for the quality of her still life paintings which showed, one critic said, "impeccable artistry." At the end of her career, in the 1960s and 1970s, she produced specialized and highly disciplined still lifes of objects such as dead leaves and pieces of crumpled paper, which, said a critic, approached a "magical realism." As an art activist she helped promote the rights of artists for fair remuneration.
Mary E. Hutchinson was an artist and art instructor from Atlanta who lived and worked in New York City during the years of the Great Depression and World War II. She specialized in figure painting, particularly portraits of female subjects. New York critics described these portraits as "sculptural," having a "bold yet rhythmic design," and often possessing a "haunted mood". Critics noted the "introspective" nature of some portraits whose subjects showed "an almost morbidly brooding sensitiveness." From 1934 to 1943 she was a member of the Art Teaching Staff of the WPA New York Federal Art Project. Following her return to Atlanta in 1945 Hutchinson was an art teacher in Catholic high schools.
Suzanne Jackson is an American visual artist, gallery owner, poet, dancer, educator, and set designer; with a career spanning five decades. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. Since the late 1960s, Jackson has dedicated her life to studio art with additional participation in theatre, teaching, arts administration, community life, and social activism. Jackson's oeuvre includes poetry, dance, theater, costume design, paintings, prints, and drawings.
Una Johnson was an American curator and art historian. She was the head curator of prints and drawings at the Brooklyn Museum for more than 25 years.
Messinger, L. M. (1996). Isabel Bishop: Self-portrait. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 54, 58–58.
Todd, Ellen Wiley. (1989). Isabel Bishop: the question of difference. Smithsonian studies in American art Vol. 3, issue 4 (fall 1989), p.24-41
Yglesias, Helen. (1975). Isabel Bishop.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Isabel Bishop .
Footnotes
↑ Wiley., Todd, Ellen (1993). The "new woman" revised: painting and gender politics on fourteenth street. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN0520074718. OCLC25051276.
↑ Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer (1982). "American Scene and Realist Painting: Isabel Bishop". American Women Artists: From Early Indian Times to the Present. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.
↑ "Isabel Bishop - Bio". Phillips Collection - American Art. Archived from the original on 21 July 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2019.
↑ Bishop, Isabel (1974). Isabel Bishop. Tucson: University of Arizona Museum of Art.
1 2 3 Kort, Carol and Liz Sonneborn (2002). A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts. New York City, NY: Facts on File, Inc. pp.23–26. ISBN0-8160-4397-3.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
