Reginald Marsh (artist)

Reginald Marsh
Reginald Marsh (at left), Louis Bouche, and William Zorach
Born	March 14, 1898 (1898-03-14) Paris, France
Died	July 3, 1954 (1954-07-04) (aged 56) Dorset, Vermont United States
Nationality	American
Known for	Painter
Notable work	Breadline (1930) Girl on Merry Go Round (1946) Pip and Flip (1932) Striptease at New Gotham (1935) Tattoo Haircut-Shave (1932) Why Not Use the 'L'? (1930)
Movement	Social Realism

Reginald Marsh (March 14, 1898 – July 3, 1954) was an American painter, born in Paris, 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. He painted in egg tempera and in oils, and produced many watercolors, ink and ink wash drawings, and prints.

Reginald Marsh was born in an apartment in Paris above the Café du Dome. He was the second son born to parents who were both artists. His mother, Alice Randall was a miniaturist painter and his father, Frederick Dana Marsh, was a muralist and one of the earliest American painters to depict modern industry. The family was well off; Marsh's paternal grandfather had made a fortune in the meat packing business. When Marsh was two years old his family moved to Nutley, New Jersey, where his father acquired a studio home located on The Enclosure, a street that had been established as an artists' colony some decades earlier by the American painter Frank Fowler.

Marsh attended the Lawrenceville School and graduated in 1920 from Yale University. At Yale Art School he worked as the star illustrator and cartoonist for campus humor magazine The Yale Record. Marsh was noted to have fully enjoyed his time at Yale. He moved to New York after graduation, where his ambition was to find work as a freelance illustrator. In 1922 he was hired to sketch vaudeville and burlesque performers for a regular New York Daily News feature, and when The New Yorker began publication in 1925, Marsh and fellow Yale Record alum Peter Arno were among the magazine's first cartoonists. Although not primarily remembered as a cartoonist, he was a prolific and thoughtful contributor to The New Yorker from 1925 to 1944. He also created illustrations for the New Masses (an American Marxist journal published from the 1920s to the 1940s).