Born in Paris, Reginald Marsh was best known for his paintings of New York City, works that captured the urban realism of Coney Island, burlesque houses, and the Bowery. He came to the United States as a young child in 1900, and although both of his parents were artists, Marsh himself did not intend to be a painter. Instead, after graduating from Yale in 1920, he moved to New York to become an illustrator. He contributed cartoons and drawings to newspapers and magazines such as the New York Daily News, the New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. In the early 1920s, Marsh attended classes at the Art Students League and soon after, he decided he wanted to be a painter. A frequent traveler to Europe, Marsh adapted the techniques and spatial arrangements of Old Master painting to his own canvases, using the imagery and people of New York City. His paintings frequently display a satiric edge, yet also convey the artist’s sympathy toward his subjects. (Mecklenburg, Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 1987)