Chicago

Reginald Marsh's Depression-era watercolor Chicago presents a row of wood-frame buildings along an almost deserted city street. A factory building, water towers, and an exhaust stack that extends beyond the top edge of the image loom behind the forlorn decorative facades of Victorian-era buildings. Skewed lines of utilitarian electrical wires crossing the view echo the oblique angles of the decrepit, slumping buildings behind them. A pale gray sky complements the melancholy tone of Marsh's image. Possibly working on site before his subject, the artist applied watercolor in rapid, casual lines and washes of drab color. In places he allowed the white of the unpainted paper to appear as highlights, and he evidently wet the paper along the bottom edge, where a line of dark watercolor subtly "bleeds" into a pale wash to suggest the curb where sidewalk meets street.

Better known for his dynamic representations of modern urban social types, Marsh was keenly sensitive to the built environment. His 1930 visit to Chicago yielded several watercolor portrayals of the city, including scenes of old buildings as well as studies of industrial sites. Ignoring the architectural trophies that had recently sprung up along such bustling commercial thoroughfares as upper Michigan Avenue, Marsh focused on scenes that captured the anxiety and despair that followed the stock market crash of October 1929. In Chicago, the current woeful condition of the modest structures' false fronts and architectural flourishes suggests the glaring contrast between contemporary realities and the optimism and pretensions of an earlier era.

A departure from Marsh's usual focus on boisterous, animated figures, Chicago's antiquated architecture and mood of quiet melancholy recall the silent, often mysterious images of Edward Hopper, such as his Dawn in Pennsylvania (TF 1999.77). In contrast to Charles Turzak's color print scene of the city's busy theater district, Randolph Street (TF 1996.45), Marsh's work presents a thoroughly unsung face of the city, anticipating a similar approach in Chicago painter Francis Chapin's watercolor City Scene (TF C1994.23).