Reginald Marsh (1898 - 1954)

  An urban realist painter of New York City genre, he devoted his career to depicting people in realist style going about their everyday business. He was also a printmaker, completing about 236 etchings, lithographs, and engravings, and devoted much time, especially in the 1930s, to printmaking.

He was born in Paris to American-born artist parents, Fred Dana and Alice Randall Marsh. His family settled in Nutley, New Jersey in 1900 and later in New Rochelle, New York. After graduating from Yale University, he worked as a free-lance illustrator in New York City for the "Daily News" and "The New Yorker" and studied at the Art Students League.

He was much influenced by urban realists John Sloan, George Luks and Kenneth Hayes Miller. He went briefly to Europe and then returned to New York to pursue his sympathetic depiction of low-life subjects. In the 1930s, he did murals for the W.P. A., and in 1943, he was elected a full academician to the National Academy of Design. He died in Dorset, Vermont in 1954.