Marsh, Reginald LLEWELLAN POWYS S. 98. Etching, 1930. State II of II. Edition of 19, printed and signed by Marsh in pencil, and numbered "16.". 5 x 4 inches, 126 x 102 mm. (plate), 8 1/2 x 6 inches (sheet).. Rare. A one inch tear at the top left, just touching the platemark, and a small tear at the lower left corner, both well closed. . Framed to 14 5/8 x 11 1/2.Llewellan Powys (1884-1939) was an English writer of essays and novels. From RI School of Design Museum's notes about March:"Through Betty Burroughs (Marsh's first wife), Marsh met Powys (1884–1939), an English writer who lived in New York between 1921 and 1924 before marrying Alyse Gregory, an editor of The Dial magazine5 . Marsh and Powys developed a warm friendship, and during the summer of 1926 the Marshes rented a house in England not far from “White Nose,” the cottage at Dorset, Dorchester, where Powys and his wife lived . They continued their friendship when Powys returned to the United States late in 1927 as a visiting critic for the book supplement of the New York Herald Tribune, and vacationed together in Belgium in the summer of 1928. Marsh described Powys as “a strikingly handsome man, a poetic and aristocratic head being crowned with fierce golden curls and a strongly boned forehead … . He was simple and, as he said, ‘a countryman.’ … He gave generously of friendship to me, taught me much and encouraged me in my work as a painter.” In the 1930s Marsh’s second wife, Felicia, was in turn made welcome in a friendship that endured until Powys’s death from tuberculosis in 1939.Marsh made several drawings and sketchbook studies of Powys in 1926, followed by two portrait etchings9 , and also exhibited a painting of Powys at the Whitney Studio Club’s 1928 members’ exhibition . The ink wash Portrait of Llewelyn Powys in RISD’s collection is undated, but its pose and costume are similar to those of Powys in a photograph taken by Doris Ulmann in 1928.11 Marsh’s ability to capture his subject was praised by Powys, who described one of the images as “the embodiment of the Powys family [—] the trunk from which we were chopped, the rock from which we were cut.” Alyse Gregory expressed a desire to have Marsh paint Powys again in 1934, writing, “I long to have you paint him—he never since I have known him has looked so striking.”"
