On the Street

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: Isabel Bishop
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: Graphic Arts
Print
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.