The genre scenes of the American painter and printmaker Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), often showing the seamy side of city life, reflected his acute powers of observation.

Both of Reginald Marsh's parents were painters. His father was one of America's first painters of industrial scenes. Reginald was born in Paris; the Marshes returned to America when he was 2, settling in Nutley, N. J. He attended Yale, then settled in New York in 1920 and began working as a free-lance artist. Eventually he became a staff artist for the Daily News and the New Yorker. He thought of himself as an illustrator, not a painter, until, in 1925, he went abroad for several months and copied paintings by Rubens and Delacroix. Back home, Marsh dabbled in radicalism, contributing to the New Masses during the 1930s.

Marsh worked in a variety of media. His first paintings were watercolors. In 1929 he worked in the...