Juley Collection Highlight

Can you guess which American artist painted Mending?

Hint: She was a twentieth-century painter and printmaker. Her preferred subjects were nudes, interiors, and urban landscapes—often Union Square in New York City—inhabited by shoppers and working people. She was a member of the Fourteenth Street School of social realist painters, which included Kenneth Hayes Miller, Reginald Marsh, Morris Kantor, and Moses and Raphael Soyer.

Still cannot guess? Well, it's Isabel Bishop, of course! See her portrait (below) from our Peter A. Juley and Son Collection. If you want to learn more about this captivating artist, then check out the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. Savor her superior drawing skills in her sketchbook and glean even more from her papers!

Source: Joan Stahl. American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995).

Pictured top: Isabel Bishop, 1902–1988, Mending, 1945, oil on fiberboard, 25 1/8 x 16 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.

Pictured bottom: Isabel Bishop, 1902–1988, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Peter A. Juley and Son Collection.