Isabel Bishop

American (1902-1988)

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1902, prominent painter and printmaker Isabel Bishop studied at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, Art Students League under Kenneth Hayes Miller and Guy Pène du Bois, and later travelled to Europe with Miller and Reginald Marsh to study the Old Masters. Bishop worked as a muralist for the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration and illustrated the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice in 1946. She taught at the Art Students League, Yale University and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and was the recipient of honorary doctorates from Bates College, Mount Holyoke College and Syracuse University. In 1979, President Carter presented Bishop with an award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.

Bishop was a member of the National Academy of Design, National Arts Club, Associated American Artists, Salons of America, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, Society of American Etchers, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Audubon Society of Artists and was a leading member of New York’s Fourteenth Street School. She exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, International, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Salons of America, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Royal Society of Arts (London) and was represented by Midtown Galleries in New York, among others. 

Bishop’s works are held in collections of major museums across the country including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and in The Phillips Collection, among others.