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OGDEN MINTON PLEISSNER, N.A.
(1905 - 1983)

Ogden Pleissner was born in 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 sporting life that Pleissner devoted most of his energies and had his greatest popular success.

In the mid-1920's, 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 towards 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 more than eighty awards for his work including the National Academy of Design's Samuel F.B. Morse Medal of Honor (1959) and Altman Prize (1961); the Gold Medal of the American Watercolor Society (1956); the Century Club Medal of Honor (for oil painting, 1958, and for watercolor, 1960); the Philadelphia Watercolor Club's Joseph Pennell Medal (1954); and the Audubon Artists' Medal of Honor (1950). His love of nature, gunning, and angling united with his artistic talents to produce a rich and varied oeuvre.