{"data":{"id":"122","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":122,"topgoose_id":2853,"tms_id":122,"display_name":"Isabel Bishop","sort_name":"Bishop Isabel","display_date":"1902–1988","begin_date":"1902","end_date":"1988","biography":"\u003cp\u003eAn astute observer of urban life, Isabel Bishop was the only female member of the Fourteenth Street School, a group of realist painters who depicted New York during the Great Depression. Like her colleagues \u003ca href=\"/artists/841\"\u003eReginald Marsh\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/751\"\u003eEdward Laning\u003c/a\u003e, Bishop trained at New York’s Art Students League under painter \u003ca href=\"/artists/893\"\u003eKenneth Hayes Miller\u003c/a\u003e, who encouraged his students to join classical forms with contemporary subject matter. In her paintings, drawings, and prints, Bishop captured subjects she encountered in and around Union Square, where she rented a studio from 1926 until 1984. She often favored female figures, especially the new generation of office girls who roamed the neighborhood at lunchtime and the matronly shoppers who frequented the area’s thriving department stores. Rather than portraying the chaos and commotion of the city’s crowded streets, as some of her contemporaries did, Bishop focused on intimate moments amid the bustle of daily life.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/3618\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eOn the Street\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003eincludes a group of men—probably drawn from the informal community of unemployed working-class males who congregated in Union Square— that serve as a backdrop for a pair of female shoppers lost in thought as they stride toward the viewer. Bishop described etchings such as this as a means for evaluating whether an image had “a nucleus that you could develop” into a painting. Indeed, Bishop subsequently used \u003cem\u003eOn the Street\u003c/em\u003e as the basis for an oil painting. This work exemplifies her distinctive use of geometrically balanced compositions and robust, carefully modeled figures to instill ordinary scenes of modern life with grandeur and monumentality.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500032484","wikidata_id":"Q6077568","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:37:43.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-31T07:01:07.685-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/122/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/122/exhibitions"}}}}