Frank Warren Marshall

Frank Warren Marshall (1866-1930)

 

Known as “the dean of Rhode Island newspaper illustrators,” Frank Warren Marshall was a painter, illustrator, photographer, and teacher. He was born in Providence just after the Civil War, the son of Thomas P. Marshall and Olive Jane Cole. Thomas was an engineer by trade, born in Maine, and Olive could trace her ancestry in Providence back to the 18th century. Frank, the Marshalls’ only child, studied at local schools, and then at the Rhode Island School of Design and later at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1885.

 

His 1888 passport application describes him as 5’10 ½” inches tall, with brown eyes, auburn hair, a long face, and a pointed chin.

 

Frank went to work at the Providence Journal in 1897, and spent 27 years there as an illustrator. During an overlapping 20-year period he also taught illustration and cast drawing at his alma mater. (Cast drawing was a step in the learning-to-draw process, where the students drew figures from sculptures, rather than from life. It helped them to bridge the divide between the still life (which, by definition, did not move!) and the human figure.)

 

His photographs, while little known today, tell the story of the city of Providence and its environs in the early years of the 20th century, and their subjects include the RI State House under construction, children at the Slater Ave. School (featuring his own daughter Dorothy), farms, fire engines, airplanes, ships, trolleys, vaudeville shows, and street scenes, as well as portraits.

 

He was also a painter, known for his landscapes of Rhode Island; Cape Ann, Massachusetts; and Boothbay, Maine. He summered in Boothbay for many years, and was a founding member of the Commonwealth Colony of Art there.  He also was a silversmith and goldsmith, creating his own jewelry.

 

In Providence, Marshall was a member of the Providence Art Club and the Providence Water Color Club.

 

Frank was married to Mary M. Loring, and in the early years of their marriage they lived at a house on Smith Hill, with their only child, Dorothy Alice Marshall, who was born in 1892. Some time between 1910 and 1915, Frank and his family moved to a house at 652 Angell Street, in what is now the Blackstone Park Historic District. [link “Blackstone Park Historic District” to http://www.preservation.ri.gov/pdfs_zips_downloads/national_pdfs/providence/prov_blackstone-park-hd.pdf]

 

Frank’s daughter Dorothy was also an artist, and taught drawing in the Providence public schools for some years. She lived with her parents until after her father’s death in 1930; in 1934 she married Leonard Ling of Maine.

 

Catherine Beyer Hurst, MBA, Writer and Community Historian

​

Further Exploration

​

A box of Frank Warren Marshall’s photographs is available for viewing at the Mary Elizabeth Robinson Research Center, the library for the RI Historical Society, located at 121 Hope St. in Providence.

​

​