Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954

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American painter and illustrator.

From the description of Photographs, [ca. 1930-1940] (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 155486635

Painter, illustrator, etcher; New York, N.Y.

From the description of Reginald Marsh printed material, 1915-1916. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 84389391

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was a painter, illustrator, and etcher from New York, N.Y.

Marsh was a lifelong free-lance illustrator for the New Yorker, Esquire, and many other national magazines. Best known for his scenes of vaudeville, night clubs, burlesque, and New York City. After his divorce from sculptor Betty Burroughs in 1933, he married painter Felicia Meyer in 1934.

From the description of Reginald Marsh papers, 1897-1955. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 84400974

Reginald Marsh was born in Paris on March 14, 1898. His father, Fred Dana Marsh, was a well-known muralist, and his mother, Alice Randall Marsh, was also an artist who painted miniature watercolors. Marsh returned with his family to the United States in 1900 and grew up in Nutley, New Jersey.

After graduating from Yale University in 1920, Marsh moved to New York, where he worked as an illustrator for the New York Evening Post and Herald, Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar . Beginning in 1922, he worked as staff artist at the New York Daily News doing a cartoon review of vaudeville and burlesque. During the 1920s, he designed theater curtains for the Greenwich Village Follies and other theater productions, and became one of the original cartoonists at The New Yorker after it was founded in 1925, actively working for the magazine until 1931 and regularly contributing drawings from time to time after that.

In 1923, Marsh married Betty Burroughs, who was the daughter of the curator of painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and herself a sculptor. They divorced in 1933, and he married his second wife, Felicia Meyer, a landscape painter, in 1934.

In the early 1920s, Marsh began to study painting and attended classes taught by John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller, among others, at the Art Students League in New York. He made several trips to Europe, once in 1925-1926 and again in 1928, to study the old masters in the museums. In 1929, he began to paint in egg tempera. He also worked in watercolor, painting several large compositions in 1939-1940. In the 1940s, he studied the "Maroger medium" with Jacques Maroger and began to use this emulsion technique in his paintings. In addition to painting, he also worked in lithography, etching, and engraving.

Marsh had his first one-man show of oils and watercolors at the Whitney Studio Club in 1924 and another show of lithographs there in 1928. He had one-man shows of his watercolors at the Valentine Dudensing Galleries in 1927, the Weyhe Gallery in 1928, and the Marie Sterner Galleries in 1929. In 1930, he had his first show of paintings at the Rehn Galleries, where he regularly exhibited for the next two decades.

In 1935 and 1937 respectively, Marsh was commissioned by the Treasury Department Art Program to paint two murals in the Post Office Department Building in Washington, D.C. and a series of murals in the rotunda of the Customs House in New York. Beginning in 1935, Marsh taught drawing and painting at the Art Students League. In the summer of 1946, he was guest instructor at Mills College, Oakland, California, for six weeks. In 1949, he was appointed head of the Department of Paintings at Moore Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, Philadelphia and taught advanced painting there in 1953-1954.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, some of Marsh's art work began to be reproduced on greeting cards issued by the American Artists Group and Living American Art, Inc. He also did illustrations for editions of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1938), John Dos Passos's USA (1945) and Adventures of a Young Man (1946), and Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper (1946), among others. He continued to do freelance illustrations for magazines, including Esquire, Fortune, and Life . Notably, he served as an artist correspondent for Life during the Second World War, and traveled to Brazil in 1943 to draw the army installations there.

Marsh was the recipient of various awards throughout his career, including the M. V. Kohnstamm Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1931, the First W. A. Clark Prize and Corcoran Gold Medal from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1945, and the Gold Medal for Graphic Arts of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954.

Marsh died of a heart attack in Dorset, Vermont on July 3, 1954.

This biographical note draws heavily from information originally printed in the catalogue of the Reginald Marsh Retrospective Exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum in 1955.

From the guide to the Reginald Marsh papers, 1897-1955, (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

Archival Resources
Role Title Holding Repository
referencedIn American Federation of Arts records Archives of American Art
referencedIn Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries records Archives of American Art
referencedIn Felicia Meyer Marsh and Meyer Family papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Research material on Reginald Marsh Archives of American Art
referencedIn Julius S. Held papers, ca. 1918-1999 Getty Research Institute
referencedIn Adolf Dehn papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Ruggles, Carl, 1876-1971. Carl Ruggles Papers, 1894-1981 (inclusive). Yale University, Music Library
creatorOf Frank Vincent DuMond papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn William Benton papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Forbes Watson papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Elizabeth S. Navas papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Gregory, Alyse, 1884-1967. Correspondence with Carl Zigrosser, 1919-1967. University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Van Pelt Library
creatorOf Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954. Artist file. Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives
creatorOf Reginald Marsh papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Peter Hopkins papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn J. B. Matthews Papers, 1862-1986 and undated David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
referencedIn Selections from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Archives of American Art collection Archives of American Art
referencedIn Isabel Bishop papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Miscellaneous art exhibition catalog collection Archives of American Art
creatorOf Wilbur D. Peat correspondence Archives of American Art
referencedIn Will Barnet papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Margaret D. Engle letters from artists Archives of American Art
creatorOf William Ashby McCloy papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Reginald Marsh printed material Archives of American Art
referencedIn Matthew Baigell papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Robert Baral papers, 1876-1980 The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.
referencedIn Norman Bassett papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Louis Bouché papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries records Archives of American Art
referencedIn Reginald Marsh photographs Archives of American Art
creatorOf Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Lloyd Goodrich papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Adolf Dehn papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Peirce, Waldo, 1884-1970. Papers of Waldo Peirce, 1936 [manuscript]. University of Virginia. Library
creatorOf Photographs, [ca. 1930-1940] New York State Historical Documents Inventory
creatorOf John Steuart Curry and Curry family papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Alfredo Valente papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Smith, Charles (Charles William), b. 1893. Papers of Charles William Smith 1910-1979. University of Virginia. Library
referencedIn Henry Ernest Schnakenberg papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Edward Laning papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Jacob Getlar Smith papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954. Artist file. Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives
referencedIn New Yorker records New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division
creatorOf American Artists Group records Archives of American Art
referencedIn Carl Ruggles Papers, 1894-1981 (inclusive) Irving S. Gilmore Music Library
creatorOf Isabel Bishop papers Archives of American Art
referencedIn Saltsberg, Jerry. Louis Bouche, Reginald Marsh and William Zorach [graphic]. Archives of American Art
referencedIn Marsh, Reginald : Biographical file. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
creatorOf Stewart Klonis papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954. Correspondence with Theodore Dreiser, 1939. University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Van Pelt Library
referencedIn Ruggles, Carl, 1876-1971. Carl Ruggles Papers, 1894-1981 (inclusive). Yale University, Music Library
referencedIn Ohio State University. Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Reginald Marsh 1898-1954 biographical file. Ohio State University Libraries
referencedIn Artists files, [ca. 1930]-1986. New York State Historical Documents Inventory
creatorOf Chapin, James, 1887-1975. James Ormsby Chapin papers, 1926-1995. Delaware Art Museum
referencedIn Whitney Museum of American Art artists' files and records Archives of American Art
referencedIn Powell, Dawn. Dawn Powell Papers, 1910-1998. Columbia University in the City of New York, Columbia University Libraries
referencedIn Managing editor Russell Lynes correspondence with artists Archives of American Art
creatorOf Sanford B. D. Low papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954. Reginald Marsh : artist file : study photographs and reproductions of works of art with accompanying documentation 1930?-1990 [graphic] [compiled by staff of The Museum of Modern Art, New York]. Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection
referencedIn Charles Edward and Isabel Patterson Eaton Art Collection papers, 1920s-1990s. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
referencedIn Marsh, Reginald, 1898-1954 : [miscellaneous ephemeral material]. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library
referencedIn Whitney Museum of American Art. Research materials and notes about Reginald Marsh used by Twyla Tharp for an unspecified and unfinished dance project, 1963-ongoing. Ohio State University Libraries
creatorOf Hobson Pittman papers Archives of American Art
creatorOf Harry Wickey papers Archives of American Art
Role Title Holding Repository
referencedIn Oral history interview with William A. Gaw Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with George Biddle Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Katherine Schmidt Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Don Freeman Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Isabel Bishop Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Isabel Bishop Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Lloyd Goodrich Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Philip Guston Archives of American Art
referencedIn Oral history interview with Betty Burroughs Woodhouse Archives of American Art
Relation Name
associatedWith American Artists Group. corporateBody
associatedWith American Federation of Arts. corporateBody
associatedWith Baigell, Matthew. person
associatedWith Baral, Robert person
associatedWith Barnet, Will, 1911- person
associatedWith Bassett, Norman, 1891- person
associatedWith Benton, William, 1900-1973. person
associatedWith Biddle, George, 1885- person
associatedWith Bishop, Isabel, 1902-1988. person
associatedWith Bouché, Louis, 1896-1969. person
associatedWith Chapin, James, 1887-1975. person
associatedWith Curry, John Steuart, 1897-1946. person
associatedWith Dehn, Adolf, 1895-1968. person
associatedWith DuMond, Frank Vincent, 1865-1951. person
associatedWith Engle, Margaret D. person
associatedWith Fleischman, Lawrence A. (Lawrence Arthur), 1925-1997. person
associatedWith Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries. corporateBody
associatedWith Freeman, Don. person
associatedWith Freeman, Don, 1908-1978, person
associatedWith Gaw, William A., 1891-1973. person
associatedWith Goodrich, Lloyd, 1897-1987. person
associatedWith Gregory, Alyse, 1884-1967. person
associatedWith Guston, Philip, 1913- person
associatedWith Harnett, Lila. person
associatedWith Held, Julius Samuel, 1905- person
associatedWith Hopkins, Peter, 1911-1999. person
associatedWith John Herron Art Institute. corporateBody
associatedWith Klonis, Stewart, 1901-1989. person
associatedWith Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 1889-1953. person
associatedWith Laning, Edward, 1906-1981. person
associatedWith Low, Sanford B. D. (Sanford Ballard Dole), 1905-1964. person
associatedWith M.A. McDonald (Firm) corporateBody
associatedWith Marsh, Felicia Meyer, 1912 or 3-1978. person
associatedWith Marsh, Fred Dana, 1872-1961. person
associatedWith Matthews, J. B. (Joseph Brown), 1894-1966 person
associatedWith McCloy, William Ashby. person
associatedWith Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) corporateBody
associatedWith Navas, Elizabeth S., 1885-1979. person
correspondedWith New Yorker Magazine, Inc corporateBody
associatedWith Peirce, Waldo, 1884-1970. person
associatedWith Philadelphia Museum of Art. corporateBody
associatedWith Pittman, Hobson Lafayette, 1899 or 1900-1972. person
associatedWith Powell, Dawn. person
associatedWith Powys, Llewelyn, 1884-1939. person
associatedWith Ruggles, Carl, 1876-1971. person
associatedWith Saltsberg, Jerry. person
associatedWith Sasowsky, Norman. person
associatedWith Schmidt, Katherine, 1898-1978. person
associatedWith Schnakenberg, H. E. (Henry Ernest), 1892-1970. person
associatedWith Shubert, Katherine Schmidt, 1898-1978 person
associatedWith Smith, Charles (Charles William), b. 1893. person
associatedWith Smith, Jacob Getlar, 1898-1958. person
associatedWith Strater, Henry, 1896-1987. person
associatedWith Valente, Alfredo. person
associatedWith Watson, Forbes person
associatedWith Watson, Forbes, 1880-1960. person
associatedWith Whitney Museum of American Art. corporateBody
associatedWith Wickey, Harry. person
associatedWith Woodhouse, Betty Burroughs, 1899- person
associatedWith Woodhouse, Betty Burroughs, 1899-1988 person
Place Name Admin Code Country
New York (N.Y.)
New York (State)--New York
Subject
Art, American
Art
Art
Beaches
Etchers
Etchers
Illustration of books
Illustrators
Illustrators
Labor and laboring classes
Muralists
Muralists
Painters
Painters
Painting
Painting
Painting, American
Occupation
Illustrator
Painter
Activity

Person

Birth 1898-03-14

Death 1954-07-03

English

Information

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SNAC ID: 5084498