Monday, October 4, 2021 – HE CAPTURED THE SCENES OF NEW YORK FROM CONEY ISLAND TO TIMES SQUARE

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2021

THE 485th EDITION

REGINALD MARSH

ARTIST

&

PHOTOGRAPHER OF

NEW YORK

from the

SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

Reginald Marsh, Coney Island Beach, ca. 1953, egg tempera and ink on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1985.30.38V

Reginald Marsh seated in front of Coney Island, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001926

Born in Paris, brought to the United States in 1900, lived mostly in New York City. Traditional artist who produced thousands of drawings for newspapers and magazines before turning to realistic painting and etching, in which his favorite subjects were people in crowded urban scenes.

Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993)

Although both of his parents were artists, Marsh himself did not plan to be a painter, and after graduation from Yale in 1920, he moved to New York to become an illustrator. He got a job doing cartoon reviews of vaudeville and burlesque shows for the New York Daily News and in 1925, when the New Yorker was founded, Marsh was one of its original contributors. Marsh continued to submit drawings to Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Fortune, and Life even after he determined to be a painter in the 1920s, and he also taught intermittently at the Art Students League, where he had studied in the early 1920s. A frequent traveler to Europe, Marsh adapted the techniques and spatial arrangements of Old Master painting to his own canvases, but continued to prowl New York’s back streets, sketching Bowery bums, burlesque queens, and the crush of people around Union Square and 14^th Street. He used compositional formats drawn from Italian Mannerist and Baroque masters in his scenes of tawdry New York life, and like his friends Isabel Bishop, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Edward Laning, Marsh brought an underlying sympathy for the down-trodden to his often satiric compositions.

Reginald Marsh, Girl Walking, n.d., lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1966.64.32

Reginald Marsh, Subway–Three People, 1934, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.169

Reginald Marsh, Tattoo-Shave-Haircut, 1932, printed 1969, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1979.60.5

Sunbathers on Slabs of Stone at Beach, from the portfolio Photographs of New York

Reginald Marsh, Untitled–Men on Dock, from the portfolio Photographs of New York, ca. 1938-1945, printed 1976, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Douglas Kenyon, 1986.94.11

Reginald Marsh, Untitled–Children on Dock/Diving, from the portfolio Photographs of New York, ca. 1938-1945, printed 1976, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Katherine Alley and Dr. Richard Flax, 1982.115.28

Reginald Marsh, Untitled–Follies Barker, from the portfolio Photographs of New York, ca. 1938-1945, printed 1976, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Katherine Alley and Dr. Richard Flax, 1982.115.23

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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Rooseveltlslandhistory@gmail.com

WEEKEND PHOTO

The Church of Madeleine in Paris, France.
Andy Sparberg or
L’eglise de la Madeleine 
Laura Hussey

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)

Smithsonian American Art Museum

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