A Well-Known Artist of His Era
Reginald Marsh’s parents were both artists living in Paris when Reginald was born in 1898. Two years later, his father, Fred Dana Marsh, moved to a new home and studio in Nutley. Throughout his childhood, young Reginald was taught to draw, influenced not only by his father, but also by contemporaries such as Albert Sterner, Ernest Haskell, and George Bellow, all frequent visitors to his Nutley home which became a popular weekend location for artists to exchange ideas.
At Yale University, Reginald Marsh became a cartoonist on the “Yale Record,” then a freelance artist for “Vanity Fair” and the “New York Daily News.” During his mid twenties, Marsh started to paint and soon became engrossed in what he called, “the great surrounding panorama of New York.” He developed what some called a “lusty technique” in painting New York scenes. He once told of his love for, “the great Coney Island Beach for its infinite number and kinds of people, for the physical manifestations of people from head to toe, its variety of design and its great vitality.”
Despite his often radical political views, Reginald Marsh was commissioned in the 1930’s by the United States government to paint the large murals on post office walls depicting the transfer of mail. Marsh’s paintings have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Addison Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Boston Museum among other notable locations. In 1943, Marsh was elected a full academician by the National Academy of Design. He died in Dorset, Vermont in 1954.