Exploring the Duality of the “New Woman” With Isabel Bishop
Sophia Limoncelli-Herwick - April 3, 2024
An independent and perceptive artist, Isabel Bishop took ordinary scenes of working-class women of the 1920s and 1930s and crafted them into compelling stories about her subjects. Acclaimed for her street scenes of everyday New York life, she is also known for her representations of the twentieth-century “New Woman”, those who crowded the streets of Union Square as they entered the workforce for the first time. But did Bishop’s approach truly encompass women's liberation or did her attempt at feminism fall flat? I argue that Bishop’s depictions of working-class women clearly offer a shrewd commentary on the New Woman’s contradictory societal position. By showing them as distinctive people with private struggles, she went beyond just documenting working-class women to creating works that ask viewers to consider their dilemmas. Her work places them outside of the home, but does not romanticize their supposed freedom at work.
Bishop was born in 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a well-educated and upper middle-class family blessed with generational wealth (Isabel Bishop: ‘A New Woman’ 2020). Her mother was a suffragist and encouraged Bishop to become self-reliant, thus playing into her decision to move to New York City and study at the School of Applied Design for Women at just sixteen years old (Isabel Bishop: ‘A New Woman’ 2020). During her time at the school, she read about French experimental artists and Post-Impressionism, which left her electrified and inspired (Bishop 1987, 7). Two years later, bored with commercial work, she transferred to the Arts Students League and studied painting, using the boisterous subject of Union Square and city life to feed her work (Isabel Bishop: ‘A New Woman’ 2020). Bishop became affiliated with the Fourteenth Street School, a group of social realist painters similar to the Ashcan School in that they attempted to paint what they saw in a documentarian, humanist fashion (Isabel Bishop: ‘A New Woman’ 2020). Bishop focused her subject matter on the New Woman, specifically women with the ability to work outside of the domestic sphere and break into the professional one (North 2018). Bishop was so enthralled by working-class and city women that even after she moved to the New York suburb of Riverdale with her husband, she would commute by train back to her studio in Union Square to observe them (Yglesias 1983, 1). She portrayed the workers with an empathetic eye that brought out the complexities of their positions and used blurring techniques, soft colors, and vulnerable/intimate poses to illustrate them as humanized individuals intertwined in the instability of modernity, caught between the new world of empowerment and conventional gender roles.
Bishop’s At The Noon Hour (Fig. 1) exemplifies how she recognized women in the workforce as experiencing empowerment, yet simultaneously forced to conform through dress, mannerisms, and rule-following. The scene depicts two young women, likely secretaries or shop girls, engrossed in conversation during what may be their lunch break. Dressed in tightly cinched clothing, buttons, a hat, and well-shined shoes, their outfits indicate a sense of pride and dignity in working in the professional sphere, existing outside of the domiciliary where women were frequently relegated, yet the constrictive belts and sheath like shoes also offer insight into the beauty standards that women had to satisfy in the occupational field. They were still objects of and controlled by the male gaze, required to dress in an elaborate, ornate manner that provided little-to-no rational function for their positions; while they were breaking into career life and away from traditional family life, they were nevertheless regarded at some level as aesthetically pleasing objects. The dolent expression of the woman on the left coupled with her hands encircling her friend’s arm paint a sorrowful recognition of and dissatisfaction with the condition of the New Woman. Professor of history Ruby Maloni notes that though the identity of the New Woman, a woman trailblazing in the public arena, was purportedly a symbol of progressive times, it was mostly just an illusion; equality and autonomy were still essentially unattainable (Maloni 2009–2010, 880). The subject Bishop painted seems to be deeply aware of these circumstances, confiding in and leaning on her friend in the allotted time that she has been granted to manage herself.
Figure 1: Isabel Bishop, At the Noon Hour, 1935, ink, 6 ⅞ x 4 ¾ inches, https://wam.umn.edu/isabel-bishop-noon-hour-1935.
The etching additionally exhibits Bishop’s use of female camaraderie as a potential way to withstand the oppression women faced in the workplace. The two women are leaning against a low wall, turned into each other. Their legs and knees are bent, displaying a relaxed, unguarded state, and their embrace corroborates that they are close. Their poses make them seem open to each other and closed to the outside world, as if they're sharing confidential information. To bolster this unspoken clandestine bond between the two women, the figure on the left has her head turned away from the viewer, her face shrouded by a hat. Her words are meant for her friend only, they are able to connect and simply be people together outside of the domestic sphere and the ostensibly enfranchised professional one. Bishop’s realist style and her encapsulation of private moments provide the perfect method for conveying the humanism of the New Woman. By painting with such a documentarian intent, she illustrates the modern woman as a multi-faceted person to sympathize with and sparks questions and critique from viewers about her experience of status and life (Yglesias 1983, 2).
Bishop’s painting Two Girls (Fig. 2) further frees the New Woman from being a pictorial object or narrow stereotype (Yglesias 1983, 3). Bishop presented her women as people coping with the cards that they had been dealt and consequently urged critics to examine what female artists were thinking about the world (Yglesias 1983, 2). The two figures in Two Girls are models that Bishop personally knew: Rose Riggens, a server at a restaurant where Bishop often had breakfast, and Riggens’s friend Anna Abbott, likely another waitress or girl who was otherwise employed (Isabel Bishop: Two Girls 1970). Bishop’s affinity for prominently displaying the personalities of her subjects is especially apparent in this piece: the expression on the face of the woman in the back communicates distress and concern in response to what that woman in the green shirt is reading. The paper she is holding seems like it could be a letter and considering that this was painted during the Great Depression, it could be issuing a termination or pay cut. The woman in the green shirt is slightly more removed from the gravity of the situation, possibly experiencing disbelief. Both women have differing reactions and therefore particular, unique personalities. Similarly to At The Noon Hour, the women have a certain propinquity that defies the constraints of the workforce and allows viewers to step into the perspective of a woman and try to understand what the woman who created the piece was thinking.
Figure 2: Isabel Bishop, Two Girls, 1935, oil and tempera on masonite, 20 x 24 inches, https://arthive.com/artists/11102~Isabel_Bishop/works/296593~Two_girls.
George Mason University emeritus faculty member Ellen Wiley Todd has written multiple articles in critique of Bishop, claiming that her work is not feminist and that she has too much distance from her subject matter, an accusation that she also makes about the Fourteenth Street School. Todd suggests that Bishop was too far removed from the new working-class women to accurately represent them, for she was raised in an affluent middle-class family and didn’t know what it was like to be assigned a low social status (Todd 1992, 47). Todd writes that this detachment from her subjects allowed Bishop to interact with her subjects only as studio models, objectifying them in a way that is no better than the male gaze (Todd 1989, 40). She believes that Bishop never envisioned them as productive workers in a society where there was an opportunity for growth (Todd 1989, 40). Todd holds that Bishop’s warm color palettes and soft brushwork romanticized and firmly placed them in the transitional space between the home and the public, and her choice of the traditional technique of the old masters rather than a modern one exploited her subjects as figures to sustain beauty in her art, inherently associating her with patriarchal ideals (Todd 1989, 32).
The claim that Bishop’s work avoids all social commentary or any expression of a need for change (Todd 1992, 1) is misguided. In her quite intentional decision to capture the moment, Bishop was making an astute commentary on female limitations in the workplace and how women were still striving for equity. Many individuals interpret Bishop’s work at a superficial level: to thoroughly analyze Bishop’s artistic body one needs to examine her potential thought process and what may or may not have been intentionally placed in her works (Yglesias 1983, 2). Bishop’s unorthodox engagement with traditional techniques actually plays a significant role in what she was attempting to get viewers to grapple with (North 2018). Her work should be interpreted as a deliberate record of what the current situation was, a way of educating those who saw it, a harsh reminder to the world of the status of women and the oppression that they continue to face even in the context of their increased freedom. The traditional technique that Bishop utilized alluded to the way the New Woman was still repressed under the guise of liberation while her selection of scenes and poses concurrently provided them with some autonomy.
Furthermore, as in Two Girls, painting the girls as consorts and immersed in each other instead of the viewer works to empower the New Woman: instead of looking to the observer for validation or confirmation, they are wholly content and capable within their own dynamic. The hazy swirl of colors and wavy lines does help create a fluid, constantly shifting atmosphere (Todd 1989, 28), but this atmosphere doesn’t completely shroud their positions as workers outside of the home. It is rather a physical embodiment of the turmoil and turbulence that modernity brought with it, the murky area that the New Woman had to navigate while she stepped out into the workplace and endeavored for enfranchisement and equity.
Also, unlike much of the visual output of Ashcan artists, Bishop’s work was not created for passive newspaper usage but for intense study and analysis. Her choice to capture women that were stuck in more menial positions compared to men, yet who were still embracing life outside of the family, is a feminist artistic take. Tidying Up (Fig. 3), for example, shows a woman checking her teeth for flecks of lipstick before she heads back to her job. While she is still actively conforming to gender norms and beauty standards, she is also living a life beyond the boundaries of traditional domesticity. The patchy background juxtaposed with the smooth, clear emphasis on her face provides a sense of stability from the woman: while she is caught in this flux of modernity, she still remains steady and prepared to take on the workplace, no matter what battles she faces. Her teeth bared, she is ready to jump into action, and her lipstick is her weapon. This painting is more or less an acknowledgment that the New Woman is not yet fully liberated, but that she will still do what it takes to gain some semblance of equity.
By using Union Square as her setting, Bishop was able to capture working women in their in-between moments. They were technically on pause, on a break from their occupations, but they were still performing for the male gaze through dress and manner. These moments acted as a vessel for Bishop to infuse political commentary into her work, with her describing the women as “...looking for their husbands and, at the same time they’re earning their living” (qtd. in Yglesias 1989, 66). In Union Square, Bishop could experience the raw energy of each individual woman as she stalked into or out of her job, picking up on every small detail of the specific woman and how those details created a character. Her perceptions of movement, shape, and color all came together in one figure to generate a story, to describe to the world what it was like to be a modern woman, set free and yet still repressed under patriarchal ideals.
Figure 3: Isabel Bishop, Tidying Up, 1941, oil on masonite, 15 x 11 ½ inches, https://websites.umass.edu/arthist391a-kurczynski-2/2018/05/10/the-seamless-web-drawing-and-gender-in-the-work-of-isabel-bishop/.
Bishop used the everyday scenes of the New Woman to make a statement, a statement that thrusted the reality of modernity and progress for women in the faces of her viewers. Her humanistic images of female camaraderie and office girls offered insight into how these women coped with their circumstances and challenged people to reflect on the experience of the New Woman, ultimately rewarding her with the reputation of one of the most influential female artists of the twentieth century.
Bibliography
Bishop, Isabel. Interview. Conducted by Cynthia Nadelman. 11 Dec. 1987, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-isabel-bishop-12753. Accessed 16 Mar. 2023.
“Isabel Bishop: A ‘New Woman.’” Berkshire Museum at Home, 6 Nov. 2020, https://bmexploredigital-cms.squarespace.com/digital-archive/she-shapes-history/isabel-bishop. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
“Isabel Bishop: Two Girls.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Jan. 1970, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/487806. Accessed 16 Mar. 2023.
Maloni, Ruby. “Dissonance Between Norms and Behaviour: Early 20th Century America’s ‘New Woman.’” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 70, 2009–2010, pp. 880–886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44147735. Accessed 9 Apr. 2023.
North, Maggie. “The Seamless Web: Drawing and Gender in the Work of Isabel Bishop.” Drawing Connections, 10 May 2018, blogs.umass.edu/arthist391a-kurczynski-2/2018/05/10/the-seamless-web-drawing-and-gender-in-the-work-of-isabel-bishop/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
Todd, Ellen Wiley. “Isabel Bishop: Our Modern Master?” Woman's Art Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 1992, pp. 45–47. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1358261. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
Todd, Ellen Wiley. “Isabel Bishop: The Question of Difference.” Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 3, no. 4, 1989, pp. 25–41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3108989. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
Yglesias, Helen. Isabel Bishop. Rizzoli, 1989. Accessed 26 Apr. 2023.
Yglesias, Helen. “Isabel Bishop: Paintings, Drawings, Prints: An Appreciation.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 24, no. 2, 1983, pp. 289–304. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25089421. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
