Reginald Marsh

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) Printmaker and painter was born on March 14, 1898 in Paris, France.  His parents were American artists studying in Paris.  A few years later the family moved to Nutley, New Jersey spending summers in Woodstock, New York.  He studied at Yale University and was the illustrator for "The Yale Record."  After graduation he moved to New York City, he worked sketching vaudeville and burlesque performers for the "Daily News" and "The New Yorker."  In 1921 he began studying at the Art Students League under John Sloan and after a European trip he took classes with Kenneth Hayes Miller and George Luks.  His etchings were his first real work as an artist.  He was a committed technician keeping track of everything in the studio, temperature, age of the acid bath, how long he soaked his paper.  He printed most of his own impressions in the early years.

Reginald Marsh is often considered a social realist, he captured people in their daily lives, the grit of the city.  What interested the artist was not the individual but the crowd itself.  His work is in most museums around the world.  The estate gave a full collection of his etchings and many of the etching plates to the Whitney Museum of American Art after the artists death in 1954.