Girl with a Newspaper

Artist Isabel Bishop (American, 1902 - 1988)

Date1946

MediumOil and tempera on Masonite

DimensionsUnframed: 24 3/4 × 15 1/8 inches (62.87 × 38.42 cm)
Framed: 33 5/8 × 24 5/8 × 2 1/4 inches (85.41 × 62.55 × 5.72 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Marie P. McCune

Object number68-8/2

SignedSigned upper right: Isabel Bishop

InscribedNone.

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionFull-length frontal view of standing figure of blond-haired stocky girl reading newspaper held in both hands at waist level. Wears orange blouse, white skirt, white scarf on hair with end of bow over proper left shoulder, black handbag depending from crook of proper left arm. Telephone pole at her left indications of buildings beyond.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

American Art - In Preparation, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 11, 2015-May 8, 2016, no cat.

Gallery Label

The woman who is the subject of Isabel Bishop’s Girl with a Newspaper resonated with the social dynamics of the mid-1940s. The number of women in the workforce had risen dramatically earlier in the decade as a result of World War II. This sparked debate when returning soldiers expected to resume their prewar jobs.

This painting is the result of Bishop’s unique and intensive preparatory process. She first made small sketches from life, which she translated into etchings. These were enlarged using photographic copying technology to establish the future painting’s size.

Published References

Painting in the United States, 1946, exh. cat. (Pittsburgh: Carne gie Institute, 1946), unpaginated (as Girl with a Newspaper);

J. R., "Art and Artists: Moderns Please the Timid in Show at the Art Institute," Kansas City Star, 12 December 1947, 33 (as Girl with Newspaper);

"Art and Artists: Free Art Exhibits to Open Sunday in City Galleries," Kansas City Star, 5 March 1948, 20; "Art," Time, 23 May 1949, 69;

Winifred Shields, "Art and Artists: High Quality of a New Exhibit Inspires Praise beyond Usual," Kansas City Star, 9 March 1951, 17 (as Girl Reading Newspaper);

Gallery News (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 17 (March 1951), unpaginated (as Girl Reading Newspaper);

Paintings by Isabel Bishop, Sculpture by Dorothea Greenbaum, exh. cat. (Trenton: New Jersey State Museum, 1970), unpaginated;

NAMA 1973, 250 (as Girl Reading Newspaper); Isabel Bishop, exh. cat. (Tucson: University of Arizona Museum of Art, 1974), 61, 197-98;

Donna G. Bachmann and Sherry Piland, Women Artists: An Historical, Contemporary and Feminist Bibliog raphy (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978), 220 (as Girl Read ing Newspaper);

Donna Bachmann, "Hidden Treasures by Women at the Nelson," Forum, Summer 1983, 8, 16 (as Girl Reading News paper);

Helen Yglesias, Isabel Bishop (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 100; NAMA 1991, 156-57 (as Girl Reading a Newspaper).

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