Marsh, Reginald

Marsh, Reginald (1898–1954). American painter and illustrator. He was born in Paris to wealthy American parents, both of whom were painters ( Fred Dana Marsh and Alice Marsh), and he was brought to the USA when he was two. After graduating from Yale University in 1920 he studied at the Art Students League, New York, in the early 1920s. Until 1930 he worked mainly as a newspaper illustrator, but he took up painting seriously after a study trip to Paris in 1925–6, and in the 1930s he became well known for his paintings depicting shabby and tawdry aspects of life in New York. His favourite subjects included Coney Island, the amusement arcades of Times Square, and the cheap and grubby street life of the Bowery district (Tattoo and Haircut, Art Institute of Chicago, 1932). He was also capable of bitter satire against the smug complacency of the wealthy, but in general his work shows a love of depicting teeming life through ugly yet colourful subjects rather than a desire for social protest. His aim was to depict contemporary life in the manner of the Old Masters and he worked mainly in tempera (he also experimented with reviving other venerable techniques). To some extent his work expressed a rejection of the affluent and genteel circumstances in which he grew up. He said he would ‘rather paint an old suit of clothes than a new one because an old one has character; reality is exposed not disguised. People of wealth spend money to disguise themselves.’ Marsh's first wife, Betty Burroughs, was a sculptor.