REGINALD MARSH (Paris 1898-Vermont 1954)
Joseph McCarthy as Baby New Year on a Hobbyhorse
ink on beige
sight size: 254 x 317 mm
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist by
Edward Laning (who inherited Marsh's studio) to
Jack Henderson (executor of Laning's estate) from whom acquired by
Private Collection, New York
Reginald Marsh was a painter, draughtsman, illustrator and etcher. He studied at Yale University where he contributed drawings and cartoons to the Yale Record. In the early 1920s he studied at the Art Students League in New York with John Sloan, George Bridgeman, George Luks and Kenneth Hayes Miller, while also working as a staff artist for the Daily News and a cartoonist at The New Yorker. During his sojourn at The New Yorker (1925-1931) Frank Crowninshield asked him to visit Coney Island and make a page of sketches for Vanity Fair, a place that he had never previously visited. Marsh fell in love with its crowds, sights and throbbing vitality which afforded him lifelong subject matter. All of New York City further captivated Marsh with its ever-changing landscape, especially the Bowery, Harlem, the harbor, its subways, burlesque shows and even the opera. From 1935 until his death in 1954 Marsh taught at the Art Students League. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, National Academy of Design and the Royal Society of Artists in London. His work can be found in numerous museums throughout the United States. Due to his devotion to New York City, Marsh left his audience an unequaled recording of modern city life. Yet at the heart of his urban kaleidoscope lay humanity and this was always his ultimate subject.[1]
Starting in 1907 until 1943, Joseph Christian Leyendecker in the Saturday Evening Рost, depicted Baby New Year connected with current events. Reginald Marsh, an experienced cartoonist, continued this tradition by presenting Joseph McCarthy in the guise of Baby New Year on a Hobbyhorse "Riding one's hobbyhorse" is traditionally interpreted as talking about one issue incessantly in which the individual is excessively interested. Marsh must have created this work in early 1950’s when McCarthy dominated the American political scene.
[1] Biographical information taken from Edward Laning, The Sketchbooks of Reginald Marsh, New York Graphic Society Ltd., Greenwich, Connecticut, 1973, pp. 23, 48, 58; Norman Sasowsky, The Prints of Reginald Marsh, C.N., Potter, New York, c. 1976, pp. 9-10; Glen B. Opitz, ed., Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1986, p. 584; and Deedee Wigmore, Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) Urban Realist Master of Many Media, catalogue D. Wigmore Fine Art Inc., New York 2008, pp. 5,7.