People's Follies #2. Tempera on artists board, 1938. Signed, Reginald Marsh, and dated, 1938, lower center. Inscribed, People's Follies #2 / painted by R. Marsh - Nov. 1938 / with egg yolk and dry color, on verso. 553x755 mm; 21 3/4x29 3/4 inches. Provenance: The Alice and Jack Fisher Collection, acquired c. 1960; Private collection, New York.
As one of the leading elders of American art during the New Deal, Reginald Marsh was enlisted in the premier art project funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, to decorate the Clinton Federal Building, Washington D.C.. Twenty-five murals and twenty-two sculptural elements were completed, all having postal themes. Marsh contributed two murals, Sorting the Mail, and Unloading the Mail. The Clinton Federal Building is now home to the Environmental Protection Agency and is not open to the general public. In 1937 Marsh completed a series of New York Harbor subjects in panels along the dome of the U.S. Custom House in lower Manhattan. This project was funded by Treasury Relief Art Project, (TRAP). These murals can still be viewed by the public in their original setting, however the building is now occupied by The National Museum of the American Indian, and in the upper floors are the offices of the New York branch of the National Archives, (guardians of the Reginald Marsh papers).
