Isabel Bishop: A Life in Urban Realism Early Life and Education Born: 1902, Cincinnati, Ohio. Isabel Bishop came from a background of intellectual privilege; her parents descended from established East Coast mercantile families. Her father was a scholar of Greek and Latin, while her mother pursued writing and early women’s suffrage activism. The family relocated to Detroit, where Bishop began formal art training at age 12 with life drawing classes at the John Wicker Art School. She initially moved to New York City at 16 to study illustration at the New York School of Applied Design…