Lloyd Goodrich and Reginald Marsh

This Thursday’s American Art sale includes several items from the collection of Lloyd Goodrich, one of the most distinguished American art historians of the 20th century and Director of the Whitney Museum of Art from 1958 to 1968. Having grown up in Nutley, NJ, Goodrich was both neighbors and family friends with Reginald Marsh and his family. Marsh initially supported Goodrich, granting him a loan in 1929 to help him research his first monograph concerning the American painter, Thomas Eakins.

As a research curator at the nascent Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s and ’40s, Goodrich published several more works, including one on Winslow Homer. In 1947, Goodrich was named associate curator at the Whitney Museum of Art, and in 1948, he became the museum’s associate director. In this position, he organized important exhibitions of American artists, including Edward Hopper, Arshile Gorky and John Sloan. As director, he moved the museum from a private to a public institution and oversaw the completion of the Marcel Breuer-designed museum building on Madison Avenue.

In addition to several works by Marsh, works from Goodrich’s collection in the sale include those by Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Guy Pene du Bois, Marsden Hartley, Avinash Chandra and Red Grooms.