UC Art Collection: Bowery Scene by Reginald Marsh

Bowery Scene A Painting by Reginald Marsh, USA Utica College Art Collection Utica, New York

The Artist

Reginald Marsh Smithsonian Portrait 1898 – 1954

The Painting

The Donor

Bowery Scene UC Art Collection, PA1 Tempera/Maroger on Masonite 20 in x 16 in Gift of Senator Benton

Senator William Burnett Benton Encyclopedia Britannica Portrait 1900 – 1973

May 10 – August 30, 2013 Exhibited in the UC Gannett Library

INTRODUCTION American Illustrator, Painter and Photographer Reginald Marsh portrayed and celebrated the everyday people and places in the dense and varied urban landscape of The City of New York. Marsh was interested in the fast and crowded pace in open and close space that are uniquely that of New York and the activities of the everyday people in public places from the 1920’s to 1954. His images present views into the rush of individuals as well as crowds in the days and nights. He carries US scenes of economic struggles and great change in the nation. His images portray gender and roles within the joys and pains of the not so rich and glamorous. The street level and below street closed spaces of the manmade construct of the huge city are featured as if characters themselves. The duality of the public spaces with private lives lived out in the city areas present types of people as lovely and not so lovely; real and types. They deliver a view into the human condition of the crowded masses of everyday people in the urban landscape.

Bowery Scene was painted in 1948. Senator William Benton was a life-long friend with Marsh and purchased many paintings for his collection for placement in collections during the artist’s lifetime. Bowery Scene was purchased by Benton from the artist’s estate in 1955 and given to Utica College in 1965. Benton’s relationship with Utica goes back to his personal experiences in Utica in his youth. The gift was assisted by Richard H. Balch of the Horrocks-Ibbotson Company [makers of fine fishing tackle in Utica since 1812].

Provenance is based on original documents in the records of Utica college Archives and Art Collection records: Feb

16, 1973

K M Rehn Gallery, NYC American Painting Appraisals Insurance Valuation of Reginald Marsh, Maroger painting “Bowery Scene”, 1948 ; Establish the painting’s existence and date

March 15, 1965

Letter from Senator Benton to Utica College

Jan 6 1965

Letter from UC President Donahue to Senator Benton Confirmation this painting was exhibited in NYC in Dec-Jan 1965 and it was to be shipped to UC at the end of an exhibit

Aug 21 1964

Letter from Senator Benton to Donahue—confirms the Marsh exhibit Planned by Huntington Hartford, in NYC—a dedication exhibit of the 10th anniversary of Marsh’s death.

1955:

Acquired by Senator William Benton [artist estate purchase]

1948:

Bowery Scene painted

THE ARTIST Born to American artist parents living in Paris on March 14, 1898, Reginald Marsh returned to the USA in 1900 with his parents and grew up in the artist colony of Nutley, New Jersey. His father, Fred Dana Marsh was well known as a muralist and his mother, Alice Randall Marsh worked in miniature watercolor. After graduating Yale in 1920, Marsh relocated to The City of New York [NYC] and worked as an illustrator for the NY Evening Post, NY Herald, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar. In 1922 he worked as a staff artist for the NY Daily News [cartoons and writing reviews of burlesque and vaudeville]. He also worked in theater productions as an artist. The New Yorker [founded in 1925] hired him as one of their original cartoonists [1925 – 1931].

Beginning in the early 1920’s, Marsh began the study of painting at the Arts Student League. His primary teachers were John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller. He married sculptor Betty Burroughs in 1923 [daughter of Metropolitan Museum of Art curator of painting]. They divorced in 1933 and in 1934 he married Felicia Meyer, a landscape painter. In 1924 Marsh had his first one-man show of oils and watercolors in the Whitney Studio Club, followed by another there of his lithographs in 1928. In 1925 and 1926 he made several trips to Europe to study the Old Masters in museums. Marsh painted in the 30s in egg tempura and continued on to work in watercolors and larger compositions.

One-man shows for watercolors were held in the Valentine Dudensing Gallery in 1927, the Weyhe Gallery in 1928, and the Marie Sterner Galleries in 1929. He turned away from egg tempera in the late 30s to the highly controversial recipes being marketed by Jacques Maroger, the famed Louvre restorer.

Like many artist of the 1930s, Marsh was experimental, trying to establish a return to the archival qualities of the old masters materials and techniques while beginning to give a total new look in paintings to ‘American Scenes’. He also experimented with lithography, Etching and Engraving. Maroger claimed he had recovered the famed and secret painting recipes used by van Eyck and Rubens. After his emigration to the USA he aggressively marketed his ideas and formulas to artists. Marsh, more than any other artist, brought him success as the primary follower of his ideas among established artists. In the 30s Marsh used the formulas as well as experimenting and mixing that info into new materials to make it his own painting materials and techniques. He gained a material look of the old masters while making images that were totally US American of the 30s---a mixed and uncertain time and people. In 1930, Rehn Galleries showed his first all painting show.

The Rehn exhibited his paintings over the next twenty years. Beginning in the mid 1930’s Marsh taught at the Art Students League in New York City.

The USA Treasury Department commissioned Marsh to paint two murals in the Post Office Department Building in Washington DC [1935 and 1937] as well as a series in the Customs House rotunda in New York City. Works were reproduced as greeting cards, advancing commissions for illustrations for publications and free-lancing for magazines and travel as an artist correspondent for Life during WW2. After the war he taught in the summer of 1946 as guest lecture at Mills College in California. In 1949, he was appointed head of the Painting Department at Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia.

Awards include the M V Kohnstamm Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago [1931], the First W.A. Clark Prize and Corcoran Gold Medal from the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC [1945] and the Gold Medal for Graphic Arts of the National Institute of Arts and Letters [1954]. Marsh died of a heart attack on July 3, 1954 in Dorset, Vermont.

THE PAINTING

Bowery Scene, 1948 Utica College Collection Beginning in 1922, Marsh frequented the theatres and stages of burlesque and vaudeville for his assignments from the NY Daily News. He became attracted to the lifestyle of the performers as well as his stage setting work and began to incorporate both in his paintings. Carefully poised characters were framed in and among theatrical-like settings that closely resembled the real life constructs of the everyday in the city.

While he worked with techniques and materials much like the Old Masters, painterly strokes of pigment and Maroger played out in glazes and layers for a rich personal visual language. His subjects and stories were clearly contemporary American in the second quarter of the 20th century.

In 1943, Marsh was quoted as saying, “I like to paint burlesque because it puts together in one picture a nude or near nude woman, Baroque architecture for a setting; and a crowd of men, very typical men, for an audience.”

The 1943 quote sums up the vertically oriented image in the 1948 Bowery Scene. A thick legged burlesque woman appears in the painting’s background. A bold structural column separates this woman from the painter’s “typical men.” By using this column, the painter Marsh separates the robust and shapely feminine from the gaunt harshness that is represented with the men. Many areas reveal the artists painterly approach in the under painting in tempera with a thin glazing for warm colors in the transparent feminine set against the opaque masculine, playing back and for grounds against each other. While this work displays Marsh’s affection of urban genres, it also exhibits his strength for working in tempera paint.

Historically, Tempera Paints were mixed from a variety of emulsions---pure pigments suspended in a variety of oils, gums, as well as egg whites. Flat, opaque and quick drying, tempera allowed artists to execute a painting that included a fine rendering of detail with faster drying time; and often drying with linear qualities made from the brush strokes. The use of egg white was solely utilized as a binder of the pigment. The under painting qualities are clearly visible in the Bowery Scene painted on Masonite as are the layers of glazing for development of forms. The artist seems to have developed his highlights with touches and strings of opaque white pigment.

THE OTHER BOWERY SCENE

Another Marsh painting carries the title, Bowery Scene, and is also dated in 1948. It is well known and belongs to the Minneapolis Institute of Art [MIA]. The image includes some of the same characters, in different positions and relationships to each, and is a landscape orientation measuring 20 inches x 24 inches. The other Bowery Scene painting was given to MIA at the bequest of Felicia Meyer Marsh. http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/index.php?start=325&v=12&dept=6

Bowery Scene, 1948 Image Copyright: Š2001 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York MIA Accession Number:82.87.2

TO LEARN MORE About The Artist: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/reginald-marsh-papers-9072/more Reginald Marsh papers, 1897 – 1955, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution [correspondence, sketches, artist process, scrapbook, reviews, exhibit records, business and finance papers, personal and work photography, awards – compiled by the artist]

The NYS Historical Society 2013 Marsh Exhibit and Publication: http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/swing-time Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York June 21, 2013 - September 01, 2013 New-York Historical Society 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street) New York, NY 10024 Scan for Web Access to the information above:

THE DONOR William Burnett Benton [April 1, 1900 – March 18, 1973] purchased Bowery Scene from the artist estate sale in 1955, and held it until he presented the Bowery Scene to Utica College as a gift on February 4, 1965. Benton became one of Marsh’s closest friends, and from the view of American Art and Business he invested in the first private purchase of Marsh’s paintings as well as going on to become the greatest collector outside institutions of Marsh’s works. The greatest amount of his collection was given to the University of Connecticut.

William Benton was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended Shattuck Military Academy and Carleton College 1917, 1918. He transferred and graduated from Yale in 1921, he was a member of Zeta Psi fraternity. He worked in advertising agencies in Chicago and New York from 1921 to 1929. In 1929 he co-founded the agency of Benton & Bowles in New York City with Chester Bowles. The agency became the largest and most successful advertising agency in the USA. He made his permanent residence in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1932. He served as VP for U Chicago from 1937 – 1945 helping to reform education and helping to establish the University of Chicago Round Table as a popular radio forum. This was a continuation of his long time relationship with the University President, Robert M. Hutchins. During that time with Hutchins he came to know Robert E. Wood, chairman of Sears and Roebuck Company. He served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1945 – 1947 as well as being a primary organizer of The United Nations. He served as U S Senator from CT from 1949 – 1953 [Democrat]. His senatorial record includes defeating Prescott Sheldon Bush and drafting the document to expel Joseph McCarthy from the Senate. He converted the US Information Service into peacetime service for cultural exchange programs and the Voice of America. He also lobbied for the Hays-Fulbright Scholarship Act and Foreign Service Act of 1946. After his tenure as senator, he served as US Ambassador to UNESCO from 1963 – 1968.

In 1943 he purchased the Encyclopedia Britannica from Sears and Roebuck Company for the University of Chicago using his own money. The management and preferred stock went to Benton as well as a royalty contract. From 1943 to his death he served as the publisher and chairman of the Board for the Encyclopedia Brittannica [he purchased the holdings]. His later professional life included serving numerous times as a delegate to the United Nations and international conferences and as trustee to several schools and colleges. He advanced the corporate holdings to include film and move toward digital publication. Senator Benton founded The Benton Foundation, and it becoming the owner of Encyclopedia Britannica. The foundation is famous for its championing of digital access for all and demanding public responsibility by mass media. The foundation has pushed for a national broadband policy as well as pushing for the Federal Communications Commission to determine public interest obligations of digital television broadcasters. The foundation is known for its pioneering efforts in telecommunications and consumer access in digital media. The foundation held the encyclopedia ownership until 1996. During his business career, Benton collected Reginald Marsh paintings, published articles on the painter and his works and gave select items to places he valued.

To Learn more about Senator Benton: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=b000399 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61209/William-Benton http://thebenton.org/info_history.php Benton Foundation: http://benton.org

THE UTICA COLLEGE ARCHIVES: The Utica College Archives holds several letters of communication between then President J. Kenneth Donahue and Senator William Benton, as well as his staff. The communications were about the potential gifting through the stages of processing, and to the actual gifting, of the Marsh painting to UC. The letters begin on March 30, 1964 and continue through all stages of information exchange to February 22, 1973 [18 total]. The earliest letter [March 30, 1964] is from Richard H. Balch, for Benton, addressed to President Donahue. He conveys that he was instructed by Benton to inform Donahue that he will try to send him a Marsh painting after his return from Africa. In that letter, Balch refers to Benton in a comment…..‘kind of interesting life to be leading for a boy that started peddling National Cash Registers in Utica some forty odd years ago’. This is the only direct connect of Benton to Utica that has been found during the information search.

Balch was the president of Horrocks-Ibbotson Company on Whitesboro St in Utica [a fishing tackle company]. Another letter from Balch to Donahue dated August 13, 1964 confirms that Benton made a painting selection for his gift to UC and will have it framed and shipped. A letter to Donahue from Benton dated August 21, 1964 says that Benton is going to show the painting in New York City before it ships to UC. Benton’s goal was to show this painting in the 10th anniversary exhibit of Marsh’s death being composed and held by Huntington Hartford in his museum [Gallery of Modern Art] in New York City. It would be formally exhibited for that anniversary and therefore increase in value as public interest and as an investment asset. A June 29, 1964 letter from Donahue to Balch informed him of the college wish to exhibit the Marsh painting with other recent purchases of paintings for the October science building dedication. He wanted to show this new acquisition with works by northeast artists Penney, Palmer, Trovato, Christiana and Parker….all those works forming the nucleus of the college art collection.

The letter from Benton’s assistant [Kay Hart] to Donahue dated February 24, 1965 brings the most information of exactness for this collection item. Hart states, “Senator Benton has asked me to tell you that he is sending you a painting by his friend Reginald Marsh. It is one of his famous bowery scenes – done in “Maroger.”

In the early 1940’s Mr. Marsh studied with Jacques Maroger, former director of the Louvre Laboratory, who had developed an emulsion which he believed was that used by the Van Eycks and their successors through the High Renaissance, and which he felt had more body and brilliance than oil. For some years, Marsh painted almost exclusively in the Maroger medium. The shippers are calling for the picture tomorrow and I hope it will reach you in time for your exhibit in mid-March……”

A letter dated March 3, 1965 from Donahue to Hart acknowledges the safe arrival of the painting to Utica College. Following that date, various correspondences relate to requests for exhibit catalogues to the Gallery of Modern Art and for valuation services. A letter arrived from Hart on March 15, 1965. It reconfirmed the purchase of the painting by Benton from the artist estate in 1955 but did not arrive with any exhibit data. That letter indicates the donor was seeking an appraisal from the Art Dealers Association of America.

A letter on April 21, 1965 from Hart to Donahue reveals the official appraisal states the then current value of Bowery Scene was $ 2,000.00 [at the time of the donation]. The next information is dated February 16, 1973 and indicates an insured value of $ 2,500.00 [by John Clancy, Director of the Frank K M Rehn Gallery, 655 Madison Avenue, and New York City]. The original 1965 letter has an inscribed notation later from 1/24/73 stating the insured value should increase to $ 5,000.00. That is the last of any communication on record until 2005 when the director of the art gallery, and collection room, Carolynne Whitefeather along with archivist Anne Flynn, began the artist and painting information searches to construct collection information files on the painting.

UC Art Collection research and file development Carolynne Whitefeather, Gallery Director Anne Flynne, Archivist Joeseph Salamida, Student Employee of the Gallery Terrance Wooten, Student Employee of the Gallery Amanda Dummett, Gallery Intern