ISABEL BISHOP
Studies of a Woman * Seated Man.
Pen and ink and pencil on cream wove paper, double-sided, circa 1930. 267x180 mm; 10½x7 inches. Signed in pencil, lower left verso. Provenance: Private collection, New York.Bishop (1902-1988) was born in Cincinnati, though moved often as a child. She began studying art at age 12 in Detroit at the John Wicker Art School. In 1918, she moved to New York and continued her studies at the New York School of Applied Design for Women and the Art Students League where she studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller who greatly influenced her.She acquired her studio in Union Square in 1926 and become part of a group of artists known as the Fourteenth Street School who depicted the urban environment and its inhabitants in a realist manner. She often depicted the New Woman that first emerged in the 1920s who worked outside the home; her subjects were often shopping, riding the subway and enjoying urban life. She looked towards Old Masters, particularly Dutch and Flemish artists, in how she rendered the form and movement of city dwellers.