James Duard Marshall (September 29, 1914 – January 26, 2010) was a painter, lithographer, museum director, and art conservator who lived most of his life in Kansas City.

Duard [pronounced "doo-erd"] was a student of Thomas Hart Benton and is best known for his 30-foot mural created for the centennial of Neosho, Missouri in 1939.

In 1954, Marshall took a two-year assignment to work for the United States Special Services Division in Germany, teaching art to soldiers of the US Army.

[14][15] In 1960, Marshall returned to Kansas City to help Thomas Hart Benton prepare his mural "Independence and the Opening of the West" in the Truman Library.

This show also resulted in an important book-length catalog by museum curator Marianne Bernardi and academic art historian Henry Adams which dedicates three full pages to Marshall.

[20] Guest speaker Daniel Paul Morrison discussed Marshall's biography and art career.

[21] A total of seven works were exhibited (in addition to the centennial mural): one oil on canvas, "Missouri Landscape" (1938); two watercolors, "Colorado Landscape" (1940) and "Kansas Wheat Harvest" (1970); one lithograph, "Going Home (1946); two block prints, "Tourist in Munich" (1956) and "At Bat" (1971); and My Road, Marshall's 1941 handmade book with eight lithographs.

Initially, civic leaders approached Thomas Hart Benton, who was then on the faculty at the Kansas City Art Institute to prepare the mural which was intended for the new Newtown County courthouse.

And the mural, after being exhibited out-of-doors during the annual Harvest Festival, found its home in the local library, which at that time was housed in the Municipal Hall.

[22] Foreground figures, from left to right: Two Osage Indians; B. J. Pearman, long-time Neosho city marshal posing as a Union soldier; unknown individual posing as Confederate soldier; Helen Mitchell Marshall, wife of Duard Marshall; perhaps George Washington Carver, who lived in Neosho during his schooldays, but did not smoke a pipe; Paul Hays honing a scythe; Congressman Maecenas Eason Benton, Thomas Hart Benton's father; Congressman M. C. M. Shartel, who represented Newton County at the time the mural was created; William H. Buehler posing as a WWI doughboy; Kenneth Smith, 13, of Neosho; and Mary Louise Stephens.

On November 29, 2022, the mural was official welcomed back at the Neosho Newton County Library with a public reception.