....Wonderland Circus, Sideshow Coney Island....

Artist: Reginald Marsh
American, 1898-1954


Tempera on canvas stretched on masonite, 48 3/4 x 48 in. (123.8 x 121.9 cm)


Marsh was heir to the Ash Can School, and he emerged as a mature artist only in 1930 after a decade of study while working for the New York Daily News and The New Yorker. Like the artists of the Ash Can School, he found the teeming city an endless source of picturesque subjects, from the squalor of the Bowery to the strip joints of Times Square. He was at his best, however, in depicting Coney Island, where masses of working-class New Yorkers congregated to seek enjoyment and escape the summer heat. Sideshow is one of Marsh's first major paintings.


Museum purchase, 1976, SN951
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art