Art: Manhattan Portrait

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Only Monroes. Marsh worked with oils, tempera, mural painting and watercolors. But in Chinese ink wash drawings, he discovered late in life his freest, most effective medium, achieving a rich, baroque feeling surpassing that of his earlier works. In later years, as honors were piled upon him, he mourned the passing of the New York he pictured. Crumped Marsh: "The new lampposts are not so good to look at. You can't tell an aquarium from the United Nations any more." At Coney Island, "the bunions and varicose veins and the flat chests are gone. Now there are only Marilyn Monroes." Marsh need not have worried about his own work ever being out of date. It caught and held the spirit and the look of an era in much the same way that other times were recorded by Rowlandson and Hogarth, the two social portraitists Marsh came closest to rivaling.