News Release
December 2003
(Bethlehem, Pa.)—No one, it seemed, knew that Reginald Marsh,
a disciple of the American “Ashcan School” of gritty urban
realism, had painted a portrait. Diane Radycki, assistant professor
of art history and director of the Payne Gallery at Moravian College,
hardly believed it herself.
But there it was, along with correspondence, student newspaper accounts,
and a mention in the 1954 yearbook, to prove its provenance.
More than three years ago, Radycki took students
in an art history class to the “Hall of Portraits,” a
corridor in Comenius Hall where hang the portraits of past College
presidents in their academic
robes. She wanted the students to see how styles of portraiture had
change through the ages, for Moravian, founded in 1742, has portraits
that date back before the Civil War and stretch forward to the late
20th century.
“I wanted to make this lively and real, so I didn’t go
to see the portraits beforehand to check them out,” said Radycki,
who was at the time new to the faculty. It was one of the students
who noticed that the painting of the Rev. Raymond S. Haupert, president
of Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary from 1944 to
1969, was signed. She deciphered the signature and asked Radycki if
she’d heard of Reginald Marsh. Radycki says she was astonished,
for Marsh was not known as a portraitist.
But, in fact, it was the same Reginald Marsh (1898-1954), who came
to artistic maturity just after the Ashcan School of social realism
and New York City street life had produced its best-known works.
[The Ashcan School comprised Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928),
Robert Henri (1865-1929), George Luks (1867-1933), William Glackens
(1870-1938),
John Sloan (1871-1951), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), Alfred Maurer (1868-1932),
George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), and Guy
Pène du Bois (1884-1958).]
References in the Moravian College archives led
Radycki to realize that the painting had its origin in an unlikely
place: a New Jersey
dog-racing track frequented by Marsh and Richard Jones, a professor
of history at the College. When members of the Class of 1954 asked
Jones to give them some ideas for the customary senior class gift,
he told them the College as yet owned no portrait of its current president.
And he just happened to know this artist in New York… The class
collected $500 and made an appointment to visit Marsh at his studio.
Marsh was so touched by the small collection, which was nowhere near
what he charged for a painting, that he agreed at least to come to
Moravian College and meet its president. Despite the different in their
backgrounds, Marsh and Haupert got on well together, and Marsh agreed
to paint his portrait.
Haupert sat for the painting in Comenius Hall,
where anyone in the College could stop by the makeshift “studio” and
observe the portrait sittings. Marsh completed the work early in
the summer
of 1954. He died a month later, apparently before entering the portrait
into his register of paintings. Marsh scholars seem not to have known
of its existence.
The portrait is three-quarters life-size and depicts
Haupert in academic robes but without mortarboard. Compared to the
other portraits in the
hall, its colors are rich and deep, and its subject’s inner energy
is almost palpable.
It was displayed in Payne Gallery this fall in an exhibit of recent
acquisitions, and then went on a tour of the state with an exhibit
that originated with the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown.
Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective liberal arts
college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to
1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college. For more
information, visit the web site at www.moravian.edu.
