Ilse Bischoff

Ilse Bischoff (1901–1990) was an American artist, book illustrator, and author. Best known for her skill in woodblock printing, she also painted in oils and casein and made graphite drawings. She remained firmly committed to representational art throughout her life, choosing human figures for her main subjects during most of career and turning toward still lifes toward the end. She illustrated many books, including two of which she was author. Family wealth allowed her to pursue the multiple facets of her career free of worries about critical reception or the income that her work would bring her. She nonetheless welcomed both the praise that was given to her art and writings and the tangible rewards they earned her.

She received art training in New York City and Munich, traveled extensively in Europe for most of her life, and maintained studios at her homes in New York and Vermont. At the beginning of her career she won the top prize in the first annual exhibition of American block prints held by the Philadelphia Print Club, a book she wrote mid-career won a reviewer's unqualified praise, and, late in her career, the director of an art center praised her "forthright choice of natural subjects" and said her work conveyed "the beauty, wit and charm of factual reality".