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Biography of Reginald MarshName: Reginald MarshBirth Date: 1898 Death Date: 1954 Place of Birth: Paris, France Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: painter Reginald Marsh The genre scenes of the American painter and printmaker Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), often showing the seamy side of city life, reflected his acute powers of observation.Both of Reginald Marsh's parents were painters. His father was one of America's first painters of industrial scenes. Reginald was born in Paris; the Marshes returned to America when he was 2, settling in Nutley, N. J. He attended Yale, then settled in New York in 1920 and began working as a free-lance artist. Eventually he became a staff artist for the Daily News and the New Yorker. He thought of himself as an illustrator, not a painter, until, in 1925, he went abroad for several months and copied paintings by Rubens and Delacroix. Back home, Marsh dabbled in radicalism, contributing to the New Masses during the 1930s.Marsh worked in a variety of media. His first paintings were watercolors. In 1929 he worked in the egg-yolk medium, getting …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…and movement of New York City. He liked to depict crowds pursuing public pleasures at theaters, burlesque houses, dance halls, and beaches. His figures are imbued with a bawdiness, a sensuousness, and often a sleaziness. His attraction to crowds went with his love of spectacles. In 1937 he defended public burlesque, and when it was banned in New York, he followed it to New Jersey. Among his burlesque subjects is Minsky's Chorus (1935). His beach scenes usually show healthy young people sunning, wrestling, embracing--unabashed in their exuberance, as in Negroes of Rockaway Beach (1934). Anatomical drawing was a lifelong interest. His work also reveals a knowledge of Renaissance compositions. Further Reading A catalog of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Reginald Marsh (1955), is informative and well done. It is based on an exhibition of 160 works, about one-third of them illustrated in the catalog. See also Norman Sasowsky, Reginald Marsh: Etchings, Engravings, Lithographs (1956). |