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Alexander Brook

Portrait of Reginald Marsh, 1929

oil on canvas

39 1/2 x 35 1/2 in.

Purchased with funds from the Penrod Society and the National Endowment for the Arts

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Alexander Brook was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898. He studied at the Art Students League in New York, and for several years in the 1920s he was assistant director of the Whitney Studio Club, a forerunner of the Whitney Museum of Art. He was one of the few artists who continued to be popular and productive even while the Depression forced others into the Federal Art Project or out of art entirely. Brook painted portraits, genre scenes and numerous canvases depicting women.

Brook’s portrait of his friend and fellow painter Reginald Marsh is moody and wistful yet delves into the sitter’s character. Brook described this portrait: “I painted Reginald Marsh’s portrait at my studio on East 14^th Street. Can’t remember the number but it was just off 5^th Avenue and Reggie had his directly opposite. He had binoculars and spied on me as well as finding likely characters on the streets to incorporate into his pictures. This was in the late 1920s—perhaps 1929—the overcoat was kept on more to protect him from the cold of my inadequately heated studio as well as to help me to make as interesting a pose and composition for the portrait.”

The references to the circumstances of the portrait sitting as well as its compositional factors shows how American Realist painters often combined a journalist’s observations with the artist’s prerogative to rearrange formal elements. The portrait exemplifies Brook’s finest work.

References

Alma S. King. Alexander Brook (1898–1980): Looking Back. Santa Fe East, 1981. ASIN: B0006XW7G6