Urban Scenes of New York by Reginald Marsh
by James Rodgers
Reginald Marsh was an American illustrator and painter, active from the 1920s until his death in 1954. Based in New York City, he painted lively, chaotic and bustling scenes of city crowds and entertainment venues such as burlesque and movie theatres and is most closely associated with American Scene painting and Social Realism. During the early to mid-twentieth century many American artists were opposed to modernist trends and styles as seen in the Armory Show in 1913. As a result, artists moved away from avant-garde tendencies to try and develop a uniquely American style of painting that reflected national values. Regionalists took romanticised and idealised scenes of everyday rural American life as their subject matter to foster a return to an agrarian society, whereas Social Realists depicted the problems of society realistically and with a sympathetic eye, and workes were often overtly political. While Marsh was not overtly political in his works, he depicted the experience and feeling of being part of working-class society (though he himself was wealthy) in urban America through popular culture and what was considered low-class entertainment and leisure. He also portrayed the realities and effects of the Great Depression on urban society. Taking a voyeuristic approach to his work, he created thousands of sketches and photographs over his lifetime, which he used in his paintings and illustrations.
Barbara Haskell writes that Marsh’s early years when he was working in his 14th street studio, which he moved into in 1923, “successfully conveyed the economic hardship and loneliness of ordinary people for whom the putative prosperity of the 1920s was an illusion”. The Bowery from 1930 is a typical example of how Marsh portrayed post-Depression life in New York. Here he depicts homeless people on Bowery Street underneath the Third Avenue rail, engaged in various activities. On the right side of the composition one man seems to be giving another directions by pointing to the right, and on the left people seem to be waiting in line. Above the crowd are signs of various hotels and a furniture store. Marsh places the subjects at eye level and the viewer can’t see how far the crowd goes on for; it is composed in a way that makes the viewer feel as though they are walking through the crowd. In this painting he used egg tempera, his preferred medium, as it dried quicker and allows the artist to make quick, layered brushstrokes that evoke dynamism and movement. Haskell writes that Marsh “exploited the medium’s graphic potential to convey the sensory turbulence of city life”.
The Bowery, 1933. Tempera on Masonite. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/487717
Marsh also explored forms of entertainment and popular culture, particularly leisure pastimes that were considered low-class or at the fringes of society. He is well known for his burlesque theatre scenes, portraying the link between humor, sexuality, voyeurism, and the grotesque. Kathleen Spies writes that “he focused on what he viewed as uniquely American and modern about the city: spectacle, crowds, consumer culture, and popular, democratic forms of entertainment in loud, boisterous places with relaxed attitudes towards moral propriety”. One example can be seen in Star Burlesque from 1933. Here the viewer looks up at a half nude dancer in the middle of a performance, surrounded by men watching her intently. Her body is lit up in contrast to the rest of the theatre, and the architecture around her is detailed and excessive. His style suggests motion that is out of control and frenetic, signalling “fun and release”, but “this freedom from structure has an ominous tone” as Spies suggests. The women in his paintings are not sharing in the excitement of the audience, following stereotypes that female dancers were desensitized, hardened, and taken advantage of. Contemporary critics were ambivalent towards his work, seeing them as threatening to the social order while at the same time being lively, entertaining, and desirable.
Star Burlesque, 1933. Tempera on Masonite.
Another aspect of Marsh’s oeuvre is the influence of the old masters, particularly of the Renaissance and Baroque period, as he would impose their techniques onto his scenes of New York. In Coney Island Beach, 1935, Marsh portrays a twisting mass of people at Coney Island interacting with each other. In the foreground a couple appears to be wrestling one another, and to the right a woman has pushed a man backwards who fell over someone and is mid-air. The painting is alive with people mid-interaction, looking at each other, playing games, and moving around. In the center of the composition is a man wearing a newspaper for shade and sporting sunglasses, arms crossed.
Marsh spent a lot of time sketching scenes and photographing at the beach, capturing the sense of unease and unruliness people felt during the 1930s in his compositions of “chaos, disorder, and abundance”. Marsh has said that “well-bred people are no fun to paint . . . I’d rather paint an old suit of clothes than a new one, because an old one has character, reality is exposed and not disguised”. The anatomy of the figures, while dynamic and chaotic, are detailed and thoughtful, much like the twisting, linear rhythms of the nudes seen in Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, Rubens, and Michelangelo, all of which he studied during a trip to Europe between 1925 and 1926. He saw the Baroque as a way to “impose order on New York’s fast-paced, compressed, disjunctive stimuli without draining them of their lusty abundance and vitality”, as Haskell puts it.
Coney Island Beach, 1935. Tempera on board. https://newyorkthegoldenage.tumblr.com/post/126847386104/reginald-marsh-coney-island-beach-1935
Marsh’s oeuvre offers an interesting perspective on life in New York and America from the 1920s through the early 1950s. He chronicles both the hardships of the Great Depression economy, but also the chaotic and lively exuberance found among people across all social classes. Even so, his works are tinged with misogyny and racism, reflecting the reality of social, racial, and gender divisions of the period, evident in his burlesque paintings and the voyeuristic way he collects his source material.