Researching Frederick Marsh

Born in 1872 to a prosperous Chicago stockyard merchant, Marsh attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he worked with artists preparing murals for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, learning the big brush techniques of mural painting.

He went to Paris where in 1895 he married Alice Randall, a fellow Chicago art student. While living in a studio in Montparnasse they had two sons, James and Reginald, both of whom achieved renown as artists. His "Lady in Scarlet", a full-length portrait of his wife, won the International Bronze Medal and was exhibited extensively. It now resides in the Newark Museum in New Jersey.

Marsh and his family returned to New York at the turn of the century, moving to Nutley, New Jersey, where they acquired a home located on The Enclosure, a street that had been established as an artists' colony some decades earlier by the American painter Frank Fowler. In 1914 they moved to the well-known New Rochelle artist colony in New Rochelle, New York. Marsh attended Yale University from 1916 through 1920 during which time he worked as Editor of the 'Yale Record'.

He created paintings for wealthy clients, as well as a series of murals entitled "Allegories of Industry" for the New York Engineering Society Library. Marsh also produced a number of terra cotta murals entitled "Maritime History of the Hudson" for the Hotel McAlpin in New York, which were later relocated to the New York City subway in 2000. During World War I, he produced patriotic posters for the publicity department of the Navy.

Marsh largely retired from commercial art in 1928. During the following year his parents, wife and youngest son all died. In 1930 he married the artist, Mabel Van Alstyne, and in 1931 moved to Ormond Beach, Florida where he built a large Streamline Moderne beachside home known as the "Battleship House" (since demolished) which was extensively decorated with murals and relief sculptures. With assistance from his wife, Marsh continued to create artworks while in Florida, including the statue of "Chief Tomokie" at Tomoka State Park and four sculptures of muses for the exterior of the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. For the rest of his life, Marsh would also continue to split his time between Ormond Beach and Woodstock, New York.

Marsh died on December 20, 1961.

Marsh was educated at Amersham Hall school and at Jesus College, Cambridge. As a cricketer he was a right-handed opening batsman and he had made his debut for Oxfordshire County Cricket Club in minor matches in 1892, playing regularly in the county's Minor Counties matches from 1897. He was described in his obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack as "a batsman with a dogged defence and no pretensions to style". He was 25 years old before he went to Cambridge University and played in the freshmen's trial match in 1901, scoring 98 in the second innings, but then failed to be selected for any games except trial matches at Cambridge for the next three seasons. In 1904, however, having made a century in a trial match for the university side, Marsh finally made his first-class debut and in his third game, the match against the London County Cricket Club, W. G. Grace's team, he scored 118 in the second innings. That led to his selection for the 1904 University Match against Oxford University, where he proved to be a successful but controversial player. In the second Cambridge innings, Marsh made an unbeaten 172, the highest score in the history of the University Match, beating by one run the 171 made by Tip Foster in 1900. The decision by Cambridge captain Frederic Wilson to delay the second innings declaration to enable Marsh to beat the record was widely criticised as the match then ended in a draw. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack wrote that the delay "was clearly a mistake" and that "the chance of winning the match should have outweighed all considerations of personal distinction", though it added that rain and missed catches had also contributed to Cambridge's failure to win.

Marsh played no further first-class cricket after leaving Cambridge University in the summer of 1904, and his appearances for Oxfordshire tailed off by 1906. He became a schoolmaster at Rossall School – where he was joined fleetingly by his Cambridge cricket captain, Wilson, who soon left to become a sports journalist; Marsh remained at Rossall until 1915.