REGINALD MARSH

Girls (Red Buttons) features two fashionably dressed young women inside a restaurant with a busy street visible through glass windows. Many of Marsh's best images are about seeing and being seen in New York City's public spaces. Here, one of the women looks at the viewer while the other glances to the right, outside the painting. The position of the women in a shallow space near the picture plane reinforces the sense that they are on display.

After graduating from Yale in 1920, Marsh became a newspaper and magazine illustrator. While studying with Kenneth Hayes Miller (whose Caller Waiting hangs on the same wall at the Huntington) he began painting in egg tempera, which is made with powdered pigments, yolk, and water. The quick-drying medium allowed Miller to work with a speed and sureness that led to some of his finest painting.