On the Street

Isabel Bishop, On the Street, 1931, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.30
Copied Isabel Bishop, On the Street, 1931, etching on paper, plate: 5 x 10 7⁄8 in. (12.6 x 27.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.30

Artwork Details

Title
On the Street
Artist
Date
1931
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
plate: 5 x 10 7⁄8 in. (12.6 x 27.5 cm)
Credit Line
Bequest of Frank McClure
Mediums Description
etching on paper
Classifications
Subjects
  • Cityscape — street
  • Figure group
Object Number
1979.98.30
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1979.98.30

Artwork Description

In 1918, Isabel Bishop moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League. Together with some of her fellow students--Peggy Bacon, Katherine Schmidt, and others featured in this exhibition--she later joined the Fourteenth Street School, an unofficial group of artists that illustrated working-class life in the neighborhood around Union Square. Bishop often chose women as her primary subjects. In On the Street, she gives particular attention to the two women who step away from their male peers, striding toward the viewer. Carrying books and reading papers, they represent the "New Woman," an independent urban female Bishop herself embodied as a successful artist during the early twentieth century.