2.5 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 2 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Drawings
Date:
1919-1966
Scope and Contents:
Drawings, caricatures, scrapbooks, correspondence, photographs, writings, and printed material.
REELS 723-724: Two scrapbooks, 1919-1935 and 1935-1966, containing clippings, exhibition catalogs, and printed materials; and 128 letters from artists, galleries, and art organizations, including American Artists Congress, Associated American Artists Gallery, Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Cadmus, Philip Evergood, Emily Genauer, Julian Levi, Gregorio Prestopino, Zoltan Sepeshy, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, William Zorach, and others.
UNMICROFILMED: Caricatures and portrait drawings by Smith of Jack Chain, Francis Criss, Stuart C. Edie, Philip Evergood, Ernest Fiene, Eugenie Gershoy, Chaim Gross, Nathan Halper, [?] Hunt, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Julian Levi, Reginald Marsh, Jan Matulka, Concetta Scaravaglione, Irving Stone, Chuzo Tamotzu, and unidentified others. Also included is a self-portrait.
ADDITION: Ca. 40 letters; photographs, including Smith, other artists, and Woodstock, NY; draft manuscript for Smith's book, "Art and the Artist and You" (includes copy photographs of illustrations for the book); writings; exhibition catalogs and related printed material; and clippings. Ca. 35 of the letters were previously lent and microfilmed on reels 723-724.
Biographical / Historical:
Watercolor painter; New York, N.Y.
Provenance:
Material on reels 723-724 lent for microfilming 1974 by David Loeffler Smith, Smith's son. He subsequently donated the 2 scrapbooks and some correspondence from the loan, along with additional unmicrofilmed material, in 1983 and 1994.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Watercolorists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The bulk of the collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website. Use of material not digitized requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Reginald Marsh papers, 1897-1955. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
The bulk of the collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website. Use of material not digitized requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Reginald Marsh papers, 1897-1955. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Series consists of Marsh's personal and professional correspondence. Among the correspondents are vaudeville performers and producers, artists, museums, galleries, publishers, greeting card companies, government officials, admirers, and former students, as well as family and friends. Correspondence largely concerns Marsh's career as a painter and illustrator, and his relationships with family, friends, and colleagues.
Correspondence documents his work as a vaudeville reviewer for the New York Daily News from 1922 to 1925; the sale and exhibition of his art work; the publication of his illustrations and caricatures in various magazines; his book illustrations; and the reproduction of his art work on greeting cards produced by American Artists Group and Living American Art, Inc. There are also extensive files (which also contain scattered business, financial, and travel documents) relating to his work on two federal art projects, murals in the Post Office Department, Washington, D.C. (1935) and the Customs House in New York (1937), and his assignment as an artist correspondent in Brazil during the Second World War (1943). Similar materials are also found amongst the business and financial papers in Series 7.
Correspondence documents his relationships with his father, Fred Dana Marsh, his first wife, Betty Burroughs, and his second wife, Felicia Meyer Marsh, as well as his relationships with friends and colleagues, including the English writer, Llewelyn Powys, the artists, Yasuo and Katherine Kuniyoshi, and the U.S. Senator (and former Yale classmate), William Benton, who ended up being one of the largest collectors of Marsh's work.
Letters from artists, such as Edward Laning, and curators, such as Lloyd Goodrich, provide some sense of Marsh's methods and techniques for creating art work (especially his use of the "Maroger medium") and his views on art and current art movements (especially Abstract Expressionism). Correspondence pertaining to the award competition for the U.S. Building at the New York World's Fair, which includes versions of Marsh's letters to and letters from Edward Bruce of the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture, is especially suggestive of Marsh's strong feelings of "despair" over the lack of originality in contemporary art.
General correspondence is typically arranged in chronological files, interspersed with files named according to correspondent. Letters are typically to Marsh, unless otherwise noted. Project correspondence is arranged according to the name of the project on which Marsh worked or to which correspondence pertains. Envelopes, which had at some earlier point been separated from correspondence, and greeting cards are arranged in files at the end of the series. An appendix of significant correspondent's names from the chronological files is included in this finding aid.
See Appendix for a list of selected correspondents from Series 2.
Appendix: Selected Correspondents from Series 2:
This list represents only a selection of correspondents and does not include names of family.
University of Rochester, College of Arts and Sciences: 1940
Weyhe Gallery (E. Weyhe): 1943
Whitney Museum of American Art: 1944, 1953, 1954
Wilder, Thornton: 1923
Worcester Art Museum: 1951
Wyeth, Andrew: 1952, 1953
Project CorrespondenceBiddle, George: 1935, 1943
Bruce, Edward: 1938
Dows, Olin: 1935, 1936
Jones, Cecil H.: 1936, 1937, 1938
Nordmark, Olle: 1935, 1936, 1937, 1941, 1942
Owen, William B.: 1936
Rowan, Edward B.: 1935, 1936
Sharkey, Alice M.: 1936
Watson, Forbes: 1936, 1937
Collection Restrictions:
The bulk of the collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website. Use of material not digitized requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Reginald Marsh papers, 1897-1955. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.