Ogden M. Pleissner

Ogden Pleissner was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He studied art at the Art Students League in nearby Manhattan. The first painting to bring him acclaim was of a backyard scene in Brooklyn, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased in 1932. From that time on, he painted many views of American and European cities. However, it was in the realms of landscape painting and outdoor life that Pleissner devoted most of his energies and had his greatest popular success.  In the mid-1920s, Pleissner began a series of annual summer trips to the West, painting in the vicinity of Wyoming. He also traveled, equipped with a salmon rod and sketching equipment, to Quebec and New Brunswick. During the rest of the year, he traveled through New England and the South. These travels provided him with a multitude of experiences and observations which he recorded in numerous sketches, oil paintings and watercolors. With his artistic sensitivity toward the changing effects of weather, time of year and climate, Pleissner captured the North American fisherman and sportsman in realistic situations depicting the beauty and diversity of nature. During the Second World War, Pleissner took a brief hiatus from painting sporting subjects to work as a correspondent for Life magazine. In that capacity, he portrayed some of the major battlefields of Europe and the Normandy Invasion.  A member and former vice-president of the National Academy of Design, Ogden Pleissner received many awards and prizes during his career. His love of nature, gunning and angling, united with his artistic talents to produce a rich and varied oeuvre. *For a more complete history on the artwork of Pleissner refer to The Art of Ogden M. Pleissner by Peter Bergh.