A member of New York's 14th Street School, Isabel Bishop is best known for her graphic art, although she also worked as a painter. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she arrived in New York City in 1918 at the age of sixteen. She studied illustration at the New York School of Applied Design for Women from 1918 to 1920 and took classes at the Art Students League from 1920 to 1924. After marrying in 1934, she lived in Riverdale but maintained a studio on Union Square near 14th Street until 1984.

Bishop taught at the Art Students League as the only female full-time instructor from 1936 to 1937, and also at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, among others. She received numerous awards and prizes, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters award (1943), an award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts presented by President Jimmy Carter (1979), and several honorary doctorates. She was the first woman to hold an executive position in the National Institute of Arts and Letters as vice-president in 1946.

In her early work, including her many female nudes, Bishop found inspiration in Renaissance and Baroque art including that of Rembrandt and Rubens. In the late 1920s to mid-'30s, she re-focused her attention on depicting the down-and-out men and working-class women around Union Square. With her discerning eye, she portrayed ordinary people in an extraordinary manner, often monumentalizing her figures within spaces that barely created context or indicated a location. In the course of the 1950s and '60s her figures became increasingly generic. Bishop always paid close attention, however, to fashion and attitudes, female friendships, and human interaction in general.