De Hirsh Margules (1899–1965) was a Romanian-born American "abstract realist"De Hirsh Margules Dies at 65; A Greenwich Village Notable - "Painter, Poet and Reporter Was the 'Man Who Knew Everyone'" in Area", The New York Times, (1965, February 4) painter who crossed paths with many major American artistic and intellectual figures of the first half of the 20th century. Elaine de Kooning said that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country".Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, p. 45The New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium"" Devree, Howard, "A Reviewer's Notebook, Brief Comment on Some Recently Opened Exhibitions in New York Galleries", The New York Times (1939, November 5)
Margules was also a well-known participant in the bohemian culture of New York City's Greenwich Village, where he was widely known as the "Baron" of Greenwich Village. The New York Times described him as "one of Greenwich Village's best-known personalities""Margules, 'Village' Artist-Poet, Left $100,000" (1965, February 16) The New York Times. and "one of the best known and most buoyant characters about Greenwich Village."
Early life De Hirsh Margules was born in 1899 in the Romanian city of Iași (also known as Iasse, Jassy, or Jasse). When Margules was 10 weeks old, his family immigrated to New York City.Elaine de Kooning. (December 1951) "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, 50(8), p. 55 Both of his parents were active in the Yiddish theater, His father was Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, a "renowned Jewish actor-impresario and founder of the Yiddish stage."Margules, De Hirsh, King, Alexander and Dunsterville, Hillary, "Time Painting", Artist Gallery, 1961, Dunsterville Forward (unnumbered page) Margules' mother, Rosa, thirty-nine years younger than his father, was an actress in the Yiddish theater and later in vaudeville. Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules, somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad TondelayoDancing into the Dark (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo.Norman, Charles, "Poets & People", Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, page 36 (Annette herself faced stereotyping as an exotic flower: writing about her, publicist Charles Bouchert stated that "Romania produces a stormy, temperamental type of woman---a type admirably fitted to portray emotion.") His brother Samuel became a noted magician who appeared under the name "Rami-Sami.""Samuel Margules Dead at 66; Magician Known as Rami-Sami", The New York Times, (1962, August 29) Samuel later became a lawyer, representing magician Horace Goldin, among others. A family portrait including a young De Hirsh, a portrait of Rosa and Annette together, and individual photos of Rosa and Edward can be found on the Museum of the City of New York website.
At around age 9 or 10, Margules took art classes with the Boys Club on East Tenth Street, and his first taste of exhibition was at a student art show presented by the club. By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamaker's.Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, p. 46
As a young teenager, Margules was already displaying a characteristic kindness and loyalty. Upon hearing that two friends (one of them was author Alexander King), were in trouble for breaking a school microscope, the nearly broke Margules gave them five dollars to repair the microscope .King, Alexander, Mine Enemy Grows Older, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958, pp 229-237. Margules had to approach a wealthy man that Margules had once saved on the subway from a heart attack. Margules didn't reveal the source of the five dollars to King until twenty-five years later.King, Alexander, Mine Enemy Grows Older, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958, pp 236-237.
In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington.Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, page 45, 55. Thereafter he pursued a two-year course of studies in architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design, while working as a clerk during the day at Stern's Department Store.Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, page 55. He was encouraged in these artistic pursuits by his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein (who later went by the name of Benjamin Benno).
Artistic career
In 1922, Margules began work as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York .Other less successful vocations included working as a traveling salesman, repairman, and engine tester in a locomotive roundhouse. Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?" Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, page 56. This led to study with Lechay and a flurry of painting.
Margules' first show was in 1922 at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery. Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe.
During the 1920s, Margules traveled outside of the country a number of times. In 1922, with the intent of reaching Bali, he took a job as a "'wiper on a tramp steamer where [he] played nursemaid to the engine." He reached Rotterdam before he turned back.Saltpeter, Harry, "The Talking Artist," Esquire Magazine, April, 1946, page 174 He would return to Rotterdam shortly thereafter.Salpeter, Harry, "The Talking Artist," Esquire Magazine, April, 1946, page 174
In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water." He studied at the Louvre and traveled to paint landscapes in provincial France and North Africa.
Margules also joined the "Noctambulist" Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, page 45 movement and experimented with painting and showing his artwork in low light. Jonathan Cott wrote that:
the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark. In fact, the first exhibition of these paintings, which could be seen only in a darkened room, took place in [ Walter Lowenfels'] Paris apartment.Cott, Jonathan, "Forever Young", New York, Random House, 1977, page 130
Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow."
It was also in Paris that Margules initially conceived his idea of "Time Painting", where a painting is divided into sectors, each representing a different time of day, with color choices meant to evoke that time of day.
In Paris, his social circle included Lowenfels, photographer Berenice Abbott, publisher Jane Heap, composer George Anthiel, sculptor Thelma Wood, painter André Favory, writer Norman Douglas, writer and editor George Davis, composer and writer Max Ewing, and writer Michael Fraenkel.
Upon his return to New York in 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin's paintings.
While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends."
Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "[i]ndebted to Marin and through Marin to Cézanne for his initial conceptual approach - for his constructions of scenes with no negative elements, for skies that loom with the impact of mountains." Margules himself said that Marin was his "father and ... academy."Elaine de Kooning, "Margules Paints a Picture", Art News, vol. 50, no. 8, December 1951, p. 56 The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing." Stieglitz also introduced Margules to many other artistic and intellectual figures in New York.
With the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Margules in 1936 opened a two-room gallery at 43 West 8th Street called "Another Place." Over the following two years there were fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and others, and the gallery was well-respected by the press."Many New Shows on Art Calendar", More Than a Score Will Open This Week; Barse Miller's Water-Colors Among Them, The New York Times (1936, March 30). It was in this gallery that the painter James Lechay, Myron's brother, exhibited his first painting.
In 1936, Margules first saw recognition by major art museums when both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased his works."Art Brevities", The New York Times (1936, October 23)
In 1942, Margules gave up working as a police reporter, and apparently dedicated himself thereafter solely to an artistic vocation.
"The Baron of Greenwich Village" Margules made his mark not only as an artist, but also as an outsized personality known throughout Greenwich Village and beyond.
To local residents, Margules was known as the "Baron", after Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a prominent German Jewish philanthropist. Margules was easily recognizable by the beret he routinely wore over his long hair.Gelb, Arthur, "City Room", New York, Berkley Books (2003), page 156 Writer Charles Norman said that he "dressed with a flair for sloppiness."Norman, Charles, "Poets & People", Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, page 37
He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body.Norman, Charles, "Poets & People", Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, page 25. Margules' letters show him interacting with art world figures such as Sacha Kolin, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as with prominent figures outside the art world such as polymath Buckminster Fuller and writer Henry Miller.
Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty. In 1929, he exhibited an example of this loyalty and fellow-feeling when he appeared in court to fight what the wrongful commitment of his friend, writer and sculptor Alfred Dreyfuss,apparently no relation to the artillery officer at the center of the French anti-semitism scandal who appeared to have been a victim of an illicit attempt to block an inheritance."Friend Sues To Free Sculptor As Sane", 1929, The New York Times (1929, August 9)