Explore the Historical information of this artwork, Tidying Up.
Educated at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, Bishop was part of the loosely organized Fourteenth Street School, who were influenced by the realism of the Ashcan School. They painted scenes of daily life that concentrated on middle-class and lower-class peoples. Bishop focused on female subjects, usually in work settings. She spent more than ten years painting the secretaries, sales clerks, and blue-collar workers who lived or worked in and around Union Square. Her favorite subject was women going about their everyday lives, eating, talking, putting on makeup, taking off their coats. These ordinary motions produced facial expressions that Bishop felt revealed the personality of the people she portrayed.
Ashcan School realism New York School of Applied Design for Women