The Art of Eloisa Schwab

At the Market, Eloisa Schwab (Cayuga Museum Collection)

Born in Havana, Cuba, painter Eloisa Schwab (1894-1990) was a rising star of the New York art scene in the 19-teens and 1920s, exhibiting extensively at major galleries like the Whitney Studio Club, a precursor to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Schwab studied at the Academy Julian in Paris and the Art Students League in New York with George Bridgman and Kenneth Hayes Miller. She was known for her early paintings of flowers and still lifes, and a 1924 New York Evening Post article touts “Miss Schwab varies between a tight incisiveness, such as her bird cages, and a free generalization that is shown in her groups of figures. “In the Workshop” she attains animation and veracity.”

She was included in the thirteenth Whitney Studio Club Annual Exhibition in 1928, with artists including Edward Hopper, who showed “Eleven A.M.” and William Meyerowitz, whose work we hold in our collection (view it here).

The exhibition featured 198 artists! Browse the catalog here.

How many artists do you recognize?



New York Evening Post, October 18, 1924 (Cayuga Museum Collection)

From the mid 1920s to 1960s she exhibited at venues including the Society of Independent Artists, the Salons of America, and the Pennsylvania Academy. By the 1960s she was known for producing contemporary scenes of people at work and play in a Modernist style, like these paintings from our permanent collection.

At first glance this image might appear as a simple snapshot of a bustling day at a bus depot, but if you look closer, you’ll find expressions of the nuances in human emotion- are these people coming, going, longing for something or someone?

Bus Depot, Eloisa Schwab (Cayuga Museum Collection)