Isabel Bishop

Isabel Bishop

1. Art Career

   • Bishop attended the Art Students League in New York in 1920
     • She studied with Max Weber (a Cubist painter), Robert Henri, and Kenneth Hayes Miller (along with others).
       • Both Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller were major members of the Ashcan School, likely influencing Bishop’s realist style and focus on the truthful portrayal of modern life.
         • She developed a baroque Flemish-inspired painting style, reminiscent of Peter Paul Rubens especially in her approach to light.
           • She was especially influenced by Rubens and other Flemish painters through many trips to Europe.
   • Working on her own, she established a reputation as an urban realist painter, cementing this reputation with her first show at the Dudensing Gallery in New York City.
     • From 1934 to 1978, Bishop leased a studio which overlooked Union Square in New York City.
       • Her work came to be defined by this spot, where she would often draw and paint moving figures and crowds in Union Square.
         • Most famously, she would depict working women, students, and homeless people.
           • Her long stretching body of work showcases the changing demographics, environment, and face of Union Square over the twentieth century.
   • Bishop continued to use her loft apartment to paint even after marrying and moving to Riverdale, New York. She became an instructor at the Art Students League in 1935, becoming the first woman on full-time staff in 1937.

2. Art Style

   • Bishop’s style was a realist style with a Flemish Baroque approach to light. She both painted and drew her subjects, also being a skilled draughtsman.
     • For much of her career, she was interested in what she called “unfixity,” or the interactive relationship between forms, the ground, and mobility.
       • This interest led to her frequent portrayal of moving crowds as in Union Square (pictured left). In this picture there is a mixture of all types of people, well dressed upper-class women, businessmen, working- class women.
         • The common aspect of all these people is that they are going somewhere. They are moving and have a destination in mind.
           • There is no way of knowing where each person is going, but the direction can clearly be understood from where each person’s front foot is pointing.
             • Additionally, there is a distinct portrayal of the relationship between the forms and their respective movements as they push past each other.
               • This painting also portrays Bishop’s Baroque Flemish approach to light with the dynamic dusk light illuminating some subjects in soft yellow light and leaving others dimly lit.
   • Bishop also focused on the portrayal of working-class women, often portraying them sympathetically. She was especially interested in fleeting, private exchanges as In her work At the Noon Hour
     • In this print, she shows two working-class women having a conversation on their lunch break.
       • Many early twentieth century artists wanted to portray distinctly American scenes, but in this piece Bishop instead portrays a universal human experience of a simple conversation during the fleeting moment of freedom away from work on a lunch break.
         • Both of the women are rendered realistically and cross-hatching is used to create volume through changes in value. Bishop similarly portrays two women in a private exchange in her work Reading and Art
           • In this one woman is reading to another woman from what is likely a letter. This painting has a similar soft yellow lighting to the dusk light in Union Square.
             • She also portrays both the women sympathetically as in many of her paintings. Both women are fashionable, likely upper-class and appear to be sitting on the same bench, likely in Union Square.

3. Basic Information

   • Isabel Bishop was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1902.

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