This small collection of the papers of sculptor Marion Walton measures 0.8 linear feet and dates from 1915-1976. Fifteen folders of letters written to Marion and her mother Blanche Wetherill Walton include many from artists and photographers, writers, musicians and composers, and political figures. Also found are printed materials, photographs, and a file concerning a reception for author Jonathan Daniels.
Scope and Content Note:
The collection measures 0.8 linear feet, dates from 1915-1976, and documents the career of sculptor Marion Walton. Found within the papers are letters, printed material, photographs, and a file concerning a reception for author Jonathan Daniels.
Letters include those received by Walton and her mother, music patron Blanche Wetherill Walton, from many notable correspondents, including artist Charles Green Shaw, historian and suffragist Mary Beard, and novelist Vera Brittain. There are scattered letters from artists Béla Kádár, Rockwell Kent, Fred Dana Marsh, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Theo Stamos, and Abbott Handerson Thayer, composers Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles, musician Pete Seeger, lecturer Ruth Gage-Colby, photographer Roy E. Stryker, political figures James Forrestal, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Shirley Williams, and writers Carl Carmer and Margaret Storm Jameson.
Printed material primarily consists of clippings and exhibition catalogs, and photographs are of Walton, her family, colleagues, and artwork. Of special interest is an early photograph of Alberto Giacometti with Rodin's model Carmen, and a photograph of Pablo Picasso autographed on the reverse.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 4 series. All series are arranged chronologically.
Missing Title
Series 1: Letters, 1922-1976 (Box 1; 15 folders)
Series 2: File Concerning a Reception for Jonathan Daniels, 1946 (Box 1; 14 folders)
Series 3: Printed Material, 1924-1976 (Boxes 1-2; 17 folders)
Series 4: Photographs, 1915-1972 (Box 2; 18 folders)
Biographical Note:
Marion Walton was born in 1905 in New Rochelle, New York, the daughter of Ernest Forster Walton and music patron Blanche Wetherill Walton. During the 1920s, she studied at the Art Students League and, from approximately 1922 to 1924, at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris under sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. One of her classmates was Alberto Giacometti.
In 1933, Walton had a solo exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery and later participated in numerous group exhibitions primarily in New York City and in Paris, France. Her work is represented in private collections in the United States and abroad, and in the museum of the University of Nebraska.
Walton taught students in her studio in New York City and at Sarah Lawrence College. She was also a member of Artists Equity and a charter member of the Sculptors Guild.
Walton was married to James Putnam, assistant to the President of the publishing house, MacMillan Company.
Marion Walton died in 1996.
Provenance:
The Marion Walton papers were donated in 1976 by Marion Walton.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Use requires an appointment.
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.
A 4 p. letter to "My dear Albert [Sterner?]," describing a show where Marsh did not sell anything, but appreciated the opportunity to see all works together; and an 8 p. letter to an unidentified person describing Marsh's painting motifs, and stating that it is Marsh's object to show "the noble side of modern industry."
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, mural painter, architect and sculptor, Ormand Beach, Fla. Used industrial themes, historical motifs and new metals and materials. Father of Reginald Marsh.
Provenance:
Provenance unknown.
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.
The papers of Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) measure approximately 9.3 linear feet and date from circa 1897 to 1955. The collection documents the life and work of the artist, who was best known for his paintings and illustrations depicting scenes of vaudeville, night clubs, burlesque, and New York City. Marsh was a lifelong free-lance illustrator for the New Yorker, Esquire and many other national magazines. Papers include correspondence, diaries, notebooks, sketches, scrapbooks, business and financial papers, and photographs, as well as some biographical and printed material.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) measure approximately 9.3 linear feet and date from circa 1897 to 1955. The collection documents the life and work of the artist, who was best known for his paintings and illustrations depicting scenes of vaudeville, night clubs, burlesque, and New York City. Marsh was a lifelong free-lance illustrator for the New Yorker, Esquire and many other national magazines. Papers include correspondence, diaries, notebooks, sketches, scrapbooks, business and financial papers, and photographs, as well as some biographical and printed material.
Marsh's correspondence is typically with family, friends, artists, colleagues, dealers, government officials, publishers, greeting card companies, admirers and former students. Correspondence concerns both personal and professional matters, documenting his relationships with family and friends and his work on various projects ranging from book illustrations to the murals he executed as part of the Treasury Department Art Program. Diaries include those Marsh kept as an adolescent, those in which he recorded his technique and work on art, and those in which he recorded his daily engagements. Notebooks include ones on art, in which he recorded notes on particular works and on painting techniques, mediums and other processes; ones used as address books and to record notes on travel and art work; and ones on finances, in which he kept track of earnings from his stocks and art, as well as some student notebooks. Diaries and notebooks both document various practical aspects involved in the creation of Marsh's art work.
Sketches include ones on loose sheets and scraps of paper and in sketchbooks, documenting some of the sources and recurrent themes of Marsh's art work, as well as shedding light on Marsh's process of creation. Scrapbooks consist primarily of clippings (illustrations, reviews, reproductions of art work) compiled by Marsh, documenting the publication, exhibition, and reception of his art work. Business and financial papers consist of paperwork (contracts, agreements, statements, receipts, permissions) relating to business matters, practical concerns, and financial aspects involved in handling his various art projects and in exhibiting and selling his art work. Photographs include ones of Marsh's family and friends, the artist at work (sketching around Coney Island and on the streets of New York), and his art work (some of which was compiled into volumes by Marsh and some of which was compiled by Norman Sasowsky).
Also found are limited amounts of biographical material, including juvenilia, official documents, awards and certificates, writings, an appraisal of Marsh's estate, and catalogs of Marsh's art work, and printed material, including exhibition catalogs, clippings, and publications.
Arrangement:
The Reginald Marsh papers are arranged as 9 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1910s-1955 (boxes 1, 11; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1920-1954 (boxes 1-2, OV 12; 1.2 linear feet)
Series 3: Diaries, 1912-1954 (box 3; 1 linear foot)
Series 4: Notebooks, 1919-1954 (box 4; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 5: Sketches, 1901-1954, undated (boxes 4-5, OV 12-21; 1.4 linear feet)
Series 6: Scrapbooks, 1901-1954, undated (boxes 6, 9-11; 1.5 linear feet)
Series 7: Business and Financial Papers, 1923-1954 (box 6; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographs, circa 1897-1908, 1920-1952 (boxes 6-8, 10; 1.3 linear feet)
Series 9: Printed Material, 1931-1955 (boxes 8, 10; 0.2 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Reginald Marsh was born in Paris on March 14, 1898. His father, Fred Dana Marsh, was a well-known muralist, and his mother, Alice Randall Marsh, was also an artist who painted miniature watercolors. Marsh returned with his family to the United States in 1900 and grew up in Nutley, New Jersey.
After graduating from Yale University in 1920, Marsh moved to New York, where he worked as an illustrator for the New York Evening Post and Herald, Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar. Beginning in 1922, he worked as staff artist at the New York Daily News doing a cartoon review of vaudeville and burlesque. During the 1920s, he designed theater curtains for the Greenwich Village Follies and other theater productions, and became one of the original cartoonists at The New Yorker after it was founded in 1925, actively working for the magazine until 1931 and regularly contributing drawings from time to time after that.
In 1923, Marsh married Betty Burroughs, who was the daughter of the curator of painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and herself a sculptor. They divorced in 1933, and he married his second wife, Felicia Meyer, a landscape painter, in 1934.
In the early 1920s, Marsh began to study painting and attended classes taught by John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller, among others, at the Art Students League in New York. He made several trips to Europe, once in 1925-1926 and again in 1928, to study the old masters in the museums. In 1929, he began to paint in egg tempera. He also worked in watercolor, painting several large compositions in 1939-1940. In the 1940s, he studied the "Maroger medium" with Jacques Maroger and began to use this emulsion technique in his paintings. In addition to painting, he also worked in lithography, etching, and engraving.
Marsh had his first one-man show of oils and watercolors at the Whitney Studio Club in 1924 and another show of lithographs there in 1928. He had one-man shows of his watercolors at the Valentine Dudensing Galleries in 1927, the Weyhe Gallery in 1928, and the Marie Sterner Galleries in 1929. In 1930, he had his first show of paintings at the Rehn Galleries, where he regularly exhibited for the next two decades.
In 1935 and 1937 respectively, Marsh was commissioned by the Treasury Department Art Program to paint two murals in the Post Office Department Building in Washington, D.C. and a series of murals in the rotunda of the Customs House in New York. Beginning in 1935, Marsh taught drawing and painting at the Art Students League. In the summer of 1946, he was guest instructor at Mills College, Oakland, California, for six weeks. In 1949, he was appointed head of the Department of Paintings at Moore Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, Philadelphia and taught advanced painting there in 1953-1954.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, some of Marsh's art work began to be reproduced on greeting cards issued by the American Artists Group and Living American Art, Inc. He also did illustrations for editions of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1938), John Dos Passos's USA (1945) and Adventures of a Young Man (1946), and Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper (1946), among others. He continued to do freelance illustrations for magazines, including Esquire, Fortune, and Life. Notably, he served as an artist correspondent for Life during the Second World War, and traveled to Brazil in 1943 to draw the army installations there.
Marsh was the recipient of various awards throughout his career, including the M. V. Kohnstamm Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1931, the First W. A. Clark Prize and Corcoran Gold Medal from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1945, and the Gold Medal for Graphic Arts of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954.
Marsh died of a heart attack in Dorset, Vermont on July 3, 1954.
This biographical note draws heavily from information originally printed in the catalogue of the Reginald Marsh Retrospective Exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum in 1955.
Related Material:
The Archives holds several collections of different provenance that relate to Reginald Marsh, including Felicia Meyer Marsh and Meyer Family Papers (available on reels 2082, 2087-2090, and 4474-4475), Fred Dana Marsh illustrated letters (available on reel 3134), Norman Sasowsky Research Material on Reginald Marsh (partially available on reels 1195 and 1463-1464), and Reginald Marsh Printed Material, consisting of two yearbooks from Lawrenceville School donated by Alvin Macauley who was a classmate of Marsh (not available on microfilm). In addition, a portion of the materials loaned and microfilmed in 1963 on reel NRM 19, including several small paintings, are housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library.
Separated Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming. Some of the material loaned for microfilming in 1963, including the bulk of Marsh's sketchbooks and some anatomy sketches, was subsequently donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Other loaned material, including several small paintings, was from the Pierpont Morgan Library. Most of the files of clippings that were donated to AAA with Marsh's papers were transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery Library in 1979. Even though this material is not technically part of the collection housed in AAA, copies are available on microfilm reels NRM3-NRM17 (sketchbooks and sketches), NRM 19 (material from the Pierpont Morgan Library), NRM 20 (small paintings), and 2233-2234 (clippings). A portion of the material donated to AAA with the Reginald Marsh papers has been separated to create a new collection of Felicia Meyer Marsh and Marsh Family papers. Loaned and transferred material is not described in this finding aid.
Provenance:
A large portion of the Reginald Marsh papers, including diaries, notebooks, sketchbooks, and photograph albums, was lent for microfilming in 1963 by Marsh's wife, Felicia Meyer Marsh. Some, but not all, of this material was subsequently donated to AAA in 1979, after the death of Mrs. Marsh, along with some additional material, including notebooks, scrapbooks, biographical and printed material. Another portion of the collection, comprised mainly of correspondence and a catalog of Marsh's art work, was donated in 1964. Three items of Marsh juvenilia were donated in 1984 by Alice Heffernan. Sketches that Mrs. Marsh bequeathed to the Whitney Museum were donated to AAA by the museum in 1987, along with 5 sketchbooks previously lent. Later gift portions were microfilmed.
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.
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.
Topic:
Etchers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Muralists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Illustrators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Fred Dana Marsh. Fred Dana Marsh to unidentified artist, ca. 19--. Fred Dana Marsh illustrated letters, [undated]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The papers of artist and silent film actress Wilna Hervey and her lifelong companion painter Nan Mason date from 1883 through 1985 and measure 4.9 linear feet. The collection is comprised mostly of letters to Hervey and Mason from friends, colleagues, and Mason's father, Dan Mason, also a silent film actor. Also found are personal photographs and snapshots, Hervey's handwritten memoirs, as well as twelve folders of Dan Mason's papers.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of artist and silent film actress Wilna Hervey and her lifelong companion painter Nan Mason date from 1883 through 1985 and measure 4.9 linear feet. The collection is comprised mostly of letters to Hervey and Mason from friends, colleagues, and Mason's father, Dan Mason, also a silent film actor. Also found are personal photographs and snapshots, Hervey's handwritten memoirs, as well as twelve folders of Dan Mason's papers.
Biographical materials include a personal narrative, notes on family history, newspaper clippings related to family, legal and financial records, and Wilna Hervey's notes on artwork.
Hervey and Mason were friends with many artists and their correspondence includes letters from artists such as Albert Heckman, Georgina Klitgaard, Manuel Komroff, Leon Kroll, Doris Lee, Fred Dana Marsh, Henry Lee McFee, William Pachner, Caroline and Paul Rohland, Andrée Ruellan, Eugene Speicher, and Dorothy Varian. There are very few letters written by Hervey or Mason, and the correspondence is mostly personal in nature. There are over 250 letters from Elsie Speicher, wife of portrait artist Eugene Speicher. Correspondence to Dan Mason has been separated and is filed in a separate series.
Wilna Hervey wrote a a number of handwritten memoirs of her days in the The Toonerville Trolley film series. She had hopes of publishing these one day and worked with writer Karin Whiteley on the project. Although her memoirs were never published, Hervey and Whiteley wrote and compiled materials for the book. Included in the Memoir Book Production series are handwritten memoirs by Hervey chronicling her years prior to and during the 1920s (many of the handwritten memoirs have been typed by Karin Whiteley). It also includes research materials, such as two typed synopses of The Toonerville Trolley scripts from Fontaine Fox's files, newspaper clippings, and playbills, seemingly intended to provide background and verification of the memoirs.
This collection also includes a few pieces of artwork; three small watercolor sketches by an unidentified artist, and a print by Edward Chavez.
Photographs are mostly snapshots of friends and family, life in Woodstock, New York and Anna Maria, Florida. Negatives originally housed in an un-postmarked envelope with a return address labeled "Betzwood Film Co.," appear to be from the filming of The Toonerville Trolley. In several of the negatives Wilna Hervey is dressed as The Powerful Katrinka, and in one negative Dan Mason is The Skipper.
The personal files of Dan Mason include letters from Hervey and Nan Mason, the bulk from their trip to Europe and North Africa in 1926-1927. This series also includes Dan Mason's own handwritten and typed memoirs, newspaper clippings, and financial records.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into six series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1916-1960 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1890-1985 (Box 1-10, OV 13; 3.8 linear feet)
Series 3: Memoir Book Production, 1883-1959 (Box 11, OV 13; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 4: Artwork, 1961, undated (Box 11, OV 13; 2 folders)
Series 5: Photographs, circa 1915 - 1982 (Box 12; 5 folders)
Series 6: Personal Files of Dan Mason, 1919-1928 (Box 12; 0.4 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Wilna Hervey was born in 1894 and grew up in Far Rockaway, New York. She met Nan Mason (1896-1982), daughter of silent film actor Dan Mason, while on production of The Toonerville Trolley silent film comedies in 1920. They were lifelong companions until Hervey's death in 1979.
As a young woman in the late 1910s, Hervey took art lessons at the Art Students League in New York City, Winold Reiss' studio at 4 Christopher Street, New York City, and during the summer of 1918 in Woodstock, New York. In 1919, she joined the Betzwood Studios in Audubon, Pennsylvania to play the role of "The Powerful Katrinka" in The Toonerville Trolley, a series of silent films based on Fontaine Fox's comic strip. Co-star Dan Mason, who played the Skipper, took Hervey under his wing, and Hervey lived with the Masons while filming the series. After The Toonerville Trolley series ended in 1921, Dan and Nan Mason traveled to Hollywood to start a new company, and Wilna followed shortly after, taking the train across the country in early 1922. The new endeavor, Plum Street Comedies, began at the Paul Gerson Pictures Corporation in San Francisco and was based on The Toonerville Trolley series; the film crew included the young Frank Capra. The Plum Street Comedies were in production for only one year, 1922-1923.
Around 1919-1920, Hervey's father bought Wilna a small studio in Bearsville, New York. From 1922-1929 Hervey and Nan Mason split their time between painting and farming in Woodstock, New York, and pursuing acting while living with Dan Mason in California. In 1926-1927, the women traveled to Europe and North Africa together to see museums, art, and architecture.
After the death of Dan Mason in 1929, Hervey and Nan Mason made Bearsville their permanent home. Beginning in the late 1950s, Hervey and Mason began spending winters in Anna Maria, Florida and summers in New York. Hervey and Mason achieved success as artists in the 1960s - Hervey as an enamel painter, and Mason as a painter and photographer.
Wilna Hervey passed away in 1979, and Nan Mason died in 1982.
Sources consulted include "The Biggest Girl" by Joseph P. Eckhardt (http://faculty.mc3.edu/jeckhard/biggestgirlarticle/thebiggestgirl.html).
Provenance:
The Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by Daniel Gelfand, a friend of Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason, in 2008.
Restrictions:
Use of the original papers requires an appointment.
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.
Occupation:
Actors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
