The Marshall Gallery Name
Many of our clients have asked how The Marshall Gallery got its name. The gallery’s founder was well-known Phoenix attorney DeeAn Gillespie, but her gallery bears the eminent name of its founding artist, Robert Marshall with continuing pride.
Serendipitously, DeeAn contacted Robert in 1999, as she sought advice for a business avocation separate from the exigencies of the law. The talented painter Robert was professor of art and Chair of the Visual Arts Department at her alma mater, Brigham Young University, better known by its popular epithet BYU. Robert also taught sabbatical art classes every year in Europe. He retired from teaching in 2008.
A devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Robert Marshall was a temple muralist and among the artists commissioned to paint murals for the reconstructed Nauvoo Temple overlooking the Mississippi River in Illinois, dedicated in 2000. The original temple had been desecrated and ruined after the Latter-day Saints’ exodus to the West in 1846.
The reconstructed Nauvoo, Illinois Temple today
Daguerrotype of the Nauvoo Temple, ca. 1846
Famous western landscape artist Dr. Frank Magleby directed Robert Marshall alongside artists James C. Christensen, Douglas Fryer, Gary Ernest Smith, and Chris Young on the historic art project.
L to R: Nauvoo Temple muralists Marshall, Young, Smith, Christensen, Magleby, Fryer
Beautiful Robert Marshall mural in the Nauvoo, Illinois Temple
Born in Mesquite, Nevada, in 1944 Robert Marshall grew up in southern California. At BYU he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art, painting and sculpture. He taught briefly at California's longest-running community college, Fullerton, before joining the BYU faculty.
Robert exhibited throughout the US and Europe and received many awards. In 2013 he received the Governor’s Visual Artist Award in recognition of his contribution to the State of Utah.
An accomplished draftsman, Robert Marshall was skilled in filmmaking, color theory, and contemporary art history. He was originally known for his watercolor landscapes but later worked with oils on large canvases.
Robert and his family lived in Springville, Utah. He passed after a long illness in 2016. And of course, an original Robert Marshall oil painting graces the lobby of DeeAn Gillespie’s Phoenix law offices.