Biography of Isabel Bishop
The life of Isabel Bishop began
on Mar.3, 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the daughter of John Remsen
Bishop who was a school master, and Anna Newbold Bartram. She is the youngest
child out of six children. There is a thirteen year difference between
her and her siblings. Her mother wanted to be a scholar and a writer instead
of being a mother and housewife. Anna Bartman taught herself how to speak
Italian in order to translate Dante's Inferno. In doing this task she never
had time for anything else including her family. When the family moved
to Detroit, they had to live in a working class neighborhood because of
poverty, Isabel was forbidden to play with the other children, so she would
watch them from her window. When Isabel was twelve years old she enrolled
in a Saturday morning art class.
When Isabel
was fifteen years old she moved to New York City and stayed at a supervised
boarding house while she attended the New York School of Applied Design
to study commercial art. While she was there she took a life drawing class.
Because of this class and the inspiration of the Armory Show of 1913 she
decided to drop the commerical art studies and enroll in the Art Students
League in 1920. After a year at the the of Applied Design she left
and entered the Art Students League. There was a loose atmosphere at the
League, the students were allowed to pick thier which teachers and classes
that they wanted. There was no requirements when it came to classes.
Isabel Bishop started in
Max Weber's class in late Cubism. Max Weber had intimidated her and was
very criticial about her work. He did not like any of her work at all.
He would tear about her work in front of the other students and gave her
a hard time. She was not able to handle the criticizism from him so she
left his class and went to study with Kenneth Hayes Miller. She was eighteen
at the time. Miller had taught her what it was required to be a serious
artist. Total dedication to work was his philosophy of what a serious artist
was.
When Isabel left the League to work on her own she
rented her first studio in the middle of Union Square. She also lived in
that studio. She would stare out her window and watch the people of Union
Square. She liked watching the hobos and bums. She made some of her best
work from those hobos and bums. The Club, Stooping Man, and Two Girls with
a Book are just some examples of her work from Union Square. When she was
twenty-four she tried to commit sucided in three seperate attempts over
a love affair that had ended. She finally gave up on killing herself and
continue to work. When she was twenty-five she produce a The Self-Portrait
of 1927. This was the first important instance of a series of self-portraits
in the great tradition. She was seen as a unquie among American woman painters.
In 1933 she had been given
her first solo exhibition and by 1934 she felt that she was finally established
as an artist. She had signed a contract with Midtown Galleries. They put
on her first exhibition. She also married in 1934 to an intelligent young
doctor. She did not have to give up her studio when she got married even
though she moved to Riverdale to be with her husband. Her husband did not
believe a woman has to give up work just because they got married. Her
husband was one of the country's leading neurologists, he was describe
as by his colleagues as a formidably authoritarian and rigid personality.
He was very supportive of her and he loved her work. She had a son
in 1940 and she named him Remsen.
Iasbel Bishop died in Feburary 1988.