Reginald Marsh

Reginald Marsh. , Reginald Marsh was most notable for his depictions of life in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Crowded Coney Island beach scenes, popular entertainments such as vaudeville and burlesque, women and jobless men on the Bowery are subjects that reappear throughout his work., In 1921, Marsh began taking classes at the Art Students League of New York where his first teacher was John Sloan. He rejected modern art that he found sterile. Marsh's style can best be described as social realism. His work depicts the Great Depression and as a range of social classes whose division was accentuated by the economic crash. He was inspired by the Baroque Masters of the past in his portrayal of the present. Burlesque queens assume the classic Venus pose, Venuses and Adonises walk the Coney Island beach and deposed Christs collapse on the Bowery. The painting Fourteenth Street in the Museum of Modern Art depicts a large crowd in front of a theater hall in an arrangement that recalls a Last Judgment., In 1914, Frederick Dana Marsh, Reginald's father, a painter, sculpture and muralist moved his family from New Jersey to New Rochelle to join the dozens of other well-known artists and illustrators who had turned New Rochelle into an artist colony. The Marshes were very active in the local art scene as members of the New Rochelle Art Association. Frederick's house at 56 Avon Road in Wykagyl Park also served as a studio for himself and his artist wife, Alice James Marsh, his brother was a metal artisan who developed the plan for New Rochelle's approach signs in the 1920s and forged the 10 iron signs that welcome visitors to the city.