Painter of "High Yaller" and "Why Not Use the 'L'?"
Reginald Marsh Self-Portrait 1933
Marsh is best known as a painter and illustrator of urban scenes, particularly street life and the beaches around New York City. Born in Paris to parents who were artists, and coming from a well-to-do background, Marsh practiced at illustration and cartooning, and then studied with artist John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York City. A trip to europe to study Old Master paintings had a profound influence on his direction and philosophy of art. He is sometimes classified as belonging to the "Fourteenth Street School" which had a concentration on figurative realism.
In style, Marsh concentrated on accurately recording his own views of city scenes with a documentarian thoroughness, cataloging images of burlesque shows, homelessness, night-life scenes and tenements.
He worked in oil, tempera, ink drawings, and etchings. He died of a heart attack on July 3, 1954, in Dorset, Vermont.
'her first lynching' - 1934 cartoon
View enlarged - "This is her first lynching" - 1934 cartoon
New Book on Marsh Coming - Oct 2012
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: D Giles Ltd
Coming in October 2012.
Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York
By Barbara Haskell (Editor), Erika Doss, Barbara Haskell, Jackson Lears, Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, and Sasha Nicholas Morris Dickstein (Editor)
Original Page 1999 | Last Update October 9, 2012