Raucous Fun
Reginald Marsh, shown in this portrait from the Peter A. Juley and Son Collection, realistically portrayed the vitality of New York City in many of his paintings. Steeplechase Park (depicted below) was one of three amusement parks at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Developed by George Tilyou in 1897, the Steeplechase ride consisted of mechanical horses that raced around the grounds on iron rails, which in certain places were some thirty-five feet high. Marsh's work, though unmistakably conveying America's love of raucous entertainments, also updates classical subjects from antiquity, such as the Battle of the Centaurs, in which half-human, half-equine steeds abduct beautiful maidens. Here an ordinary sailor on holiday takes his girl on a honky-tonk amusement park ride, the horses no more than clever mechanical toys.
This artwork is part of our traveling exhibition Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, currently on view at the Albany Institute of History & Art through December 9, 2001.
Source: Elizabeth Prelinger. Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).
Pictured top: Portrait of Reginald Marsh, 1898 France–1954 USA, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection.
Pictured bottom: Reginald Marsh, 1898 France–1954 USA, George Tilyou's Steeplechase, 1932, oil and egg tempera on linen mounted fiberboard, 30 1/8 x 40 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.
Reginald Marsh, shown in this portrait from the Peter A. Juley and Son Collection, realistically portrayed the vitality of New York City in many of his paintings. Steeplechase Park (depicted below) was one of three amusement parks at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Developed by George Tilyou in 1897, the Steeplechase ride consisted of mechanical horses that raced around the grounds on iron rails, which in certain places were some thirty-five feet high. Marsh's work, though unmistakably conveying America's love of raucous entertainments, also updates classical subjects from antiquity, such as the Battle of the Centaurs, in which half-human, half-equine steeds abduct beautiful maidens. Here an ordinary sailor on holiday takes his girl on a honky-tonk amusement park ride, the horses no more than clever mechanical toys.