Urban Realism and the American Scene

Chicago, 1930
Object-Reginald Marsh, Chicago
The urban-realist painter Reginald Marsh is known for his scenes of New York City, which he showed as vulgar, chaotic, and teeming with life. A departure from his dynamic representations of social types, Chicago displays his sensitivity to urban built environments. This watercolor presents a row of decaying Victorian-era storefronts along a nearly deserted street, with a factory building, water towers, and an exhaust stack looming in the background. Marsh’s 1930 visit to Chicago yielded several images of the city in watercolor, which he applied in rapid lines and washes. Ignoring the recently erected architectural showplaces in the city’s bustling commercial districts, he focused on scenes that captured the anxiety and despair following the stock market crash of October 1929. In Chicago, the woeful condition of these modest structures suggests the glaring contrast between the optimism of the 1920s and the encroaching realities of what became known as the Great Depression.
Learn more about this watercolor on the Terra Foundation website.
Chicago, 1930
Urban Realism and the American Scene

Bal Bullier, c. 1895

The Grand Canal, Venice, c. 1898–99

Theater Scene, 1903

Salem Willows, 1904

Knitting for the Soldiers: High Bridge Park, c. 1918

Sylvester, 1914

Cranberrying, Monhegan, c. 1907

The Palisades, 1909

Figure in Motion, 1913

Slaves, 1925

Builders of the Desert, 1923

Chicago, 1930

Pip and Flip, 1932

Between Acts, 1935

Bucks County Barn, 1940

After Church, 1941

Dawn in Pennsylvania, 1942

Bar-b-que, 1942

Clown with Drum, 1942

Sierra Madre at Monterrey, 1943