Reginald Marsh (1898-1954)

Hiro Fine Art is interested in purchasing artwork by Reginald Marsh.

Born in Paris in 1989, Reginald Marsh and his family settled in New Jersey in 1900. Marsh is known for his depictions of New York City from the Roaring Twenties through the Great Depression. He began painting in his early adulthood, and traveled to Europe to study the masters. He met Thomas Hart Benton at a gallery in France and began to take note of Hart’s work. He appreciated that Benton was a social realist and saw parallels between his work and the old masters. Marsh’s mature style was influenced by Hart and by Renaissance painters’ stable compositions which were created through groupings of figures, architecture and landscapes.

Upon returning to New York, he painted through a social realist perspective. His canvases and prints were filled with the amused crowds at the beaches of Coney Island as well as the homeless sleeping on Bowery Street. He inspected the social classes by depicting them as subject matter in his work. Specifically, this included city nightlife, flappers and the popular entertainment of the day: vaudeville and burlesque theater. He considered this raunchy entertainment for the common man, as expressed fantasies of the underprivileged. Though he was wealthy himself, Marsh’s preferred subject matter was the poor, for it created a sense of psychological shock in finished works.