Ogden Minton Pleissner

Famous American Sporting Artist and a “Good Academician”¹

Ogden Pleissner was a realist artist whose passion for the outdoors translated into a powerful emotional presence in his paintings.

By Amy Spencer

---

I. Biography

Ogden Minton Pleissner was a twentieth-century artist whose traditional images of city scenes, landscapes, battlefields, and sporting subjects were realistically detailed, yet uniquely evocative. He had some academic art training; however, Pleissner always credited his painting skills to his love of the outdoors, saying, “I find that I can learn more about what I am doing by going outside somewhere, in nature, and walking through the fields or climbing the mountains . . . rather than going through the hands of another artist.”² His masterful use of light and color pervades his war images and later watercolor paintings.

Pleissner was born on April 29, 1905, in Brooklyn, New York. His family was interested in the arts (his mother was an accomplished violinist), and Pleissner was an avid drawer from an early age. When Pleissner was sixteen years old, he was sent to summer camp in Dubois, Wyoming. With a group of twenty other boys, Pleissner spent his days hiking, camping, and fishing in Yellowstone National Park. He also spent his time drawing images of horses, cowboys, Native Americans, and scenery. This first experience of the American West had a great impact on Pleissner. As an adult, he returned many times to Wyoming on camping-painting trips.

After graduating from Brooklyn Friends School, Pleissner attended the Art Students League for four years until 1927. He studied under George Bridgeman, who taught anatomy and drawing from plaster casts, and National Academy member Frank DuMond. DuMond ran summer classes in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, that Pleissner also attended. During one of these trips, Pleissner met Mary Harrison Corbett, whom he married in 1929.

While at the Art Students League, Pleissner submitted a number of drawings to magazines but was turned down. He also took his pictures around to New York galleries, but during the early years of the Depression, he found it difficult to get people interested in his paintings. Eventually, Harlow MacDonald agreed to display one of Pleissner’s works in his Fifth Avenue Gallery. The work quickly sold and, shortly afterward, MacBeth Gallery offered Pleissner his first one-man show.

Throughout the 1930s, Pleissner worked mainly in oils and became known for his Western landscapes and images of New England. In 1930, he began teaching at Pratt Institute, where he worked for four years. For the next twelve summers, Pleissner and his wife went to Wyoming, where they lived on a ranch from June through September.

In 1940, Pleissner was elected an Academician at the National Academy. Two years later, he was commissioned by the U.S. Office of Emergency Management to visit various war industries to make a group of paintings depicting the wartime efforts at various sites. Just two years later, Pleissner joined the United States Air Force as a war artist with the Historical Division. He completed officer training in Miami and was then assigned to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The cold and wet conditions working in the field demanded that Pleissner switch from oil paints to watercolors (he would continue to paint predominantly with watercolors for the rest of his career). Pleissner worked in the Aleutians for three months, producing hundreds of small sketches. These sketches were later featured in a one-man exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Life magazine offered to employ Pleissner as a war correspondent in Europe (with the War Department’s support) in 1944. Pleissner relocated to new headquarters in London and then spent two years traveling throughout France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, documenting places where Americans fought, including Normandy. After the Allied victory in Europe, Pleissner spent the summer of 1945 making a series of paintings of the most significant battle sites, including Omaha Beach in France, Remagen in Germany, and Anzio in Italy. Life’s collection of war images, including Pleissner’s paintings, was given to the United States Army Art Collection after the war. Today, many of these images can be seen hanging in the corridors and offices of the Pentagon, West Point, and the Air Force Academy.

During his post-war career, Pleissner continued to travel, taking yearly trips around Europe and to Wyoming, painting urban scenes, landscapes, and sporting subjects. Pleissner became devoted to outdoor life, developing skills at hunting and fishing, which became some of his favorite subjects to paint. Working as a war artist forced Pleissner to learn to paint very quickly under difficult circumstances, and his later works demonstrate his developed skill at depicting the fleeting immediacy of movement in nature.

Pleissner traveled to Bermuda several times later in life and painted numerous works around the town of St. George (today, visitors to the island can take a self-guided tour of the sights Pleissner painted).³ In 1974, Pleissner’s wife died suddenly from a heart attack; the artist remarried Marion Williams Gould in 1977. Ogden M. Pleissner died of a heart attack on October 24, 1983, while in England.

Ogden Minton Pleissner participated in many organizations throughout his career, including as vice-president of the National Academy of Design, director of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and trustee at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. Today, the Pleissner Gallery at the Shelburne Museum features forty of the museum’s six hundred Pleissner works in a rotating exhibition. Pleissner’s work is also held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

II. Chronology

• 1905 Born in Brooklyn, New York
• 1921 Spends summer at camp in Dubois, Wyoming
• 1922 Graduates from Brooklyn Friends School
• 1922–25 Returns to Dubois as an adult on painting trips each summer
• 1923 Studies at the Art Students League (until 1927)
• 1929 Marries Mary Corbett
• 1929 Keeps studio at 186 Washington Park, Brooklyn (works here until 1936)
• 1930 Teaches at the Pratt Institute (until 1934)
• 1932 Metropolitan Museum of Art purchases Back Yards, Brooklyn (1932)
• 1935 Teaches at the National Academy for the next two years
• 1936 Works in studio at 10th Street, Manhattan
• 1937 Elected Associate at the National Academy
• 1940 Elected Academician at the National Academy
• 1942 Joins the Air Force
• 1943 In the 8th, 9th, and 11th Air Forces stationed in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska
• 1944 Works as a war correspondent for Life magazine
• 1945 After World War II, takes painting trip through England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, and Portugal
• 1947 Builds house and studios in Pawlet, Vermont
• 1974 Wife dies suddenly from a heart attack
• 1977 Marries Marion Williams Gould
• 1983 Dies in London
  

III. Collections

• Alamo Museum, TX
• American Museum of Fly Fishing, VT
• Amon Carter Museum, TX
• Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum
• Art Students League
• Bowdoin College, ME
• Brigham Young University Museum of Art
• Brooklyn Museum
• Butler Institute of American Art, OH
• Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery, NY
• Cincinnati Art Museum
• Colby College, ME
• Columbus Museum of Art, OH
• Columbus Museum of Arts and Sciences, GA
• Fitchburg Art Museum, MA
• Florence Griswold Museum, CT
• Georgia State University Art Gallery, GA
• High Museum of Art, GA
• Library of Congress
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Lyman Allyn Museum, CT
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, MA
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Miami University Art Museum, OH
• Minneapolis Museum of Art, MN
• Montclair Art Museum, NJ
• National Academy of Design
• National Museum of Sport
• National Art Museum of Sport at Indiana University
• National Museum of Wildlife Art, WY
• New Britain Museum of American Art, CT
• New Hampshire State Library, NH
• New York Public Library
• Norton Gallery and School of Art, FL
• Parrish Art Museum, NY
• Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Philbrook Art Center, OK
• Phoenix Art Museum, AZ
• Reading Public Museum, PA
• Rockwell Museum of Western Art, NY
• Shelburne Museum, VT
• Smith College, MA
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Southern Vermont Art Center
• Springville Museum of Art, UT
• Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences
• Texas State Capitol
• Toledo Museum of Art
• United States Air Force Academy, CO
• United States Army Art Collection
• United States Embassy, London
• United States Military Academy, NY
• University Club, NY
• University of Idaho
• University of Maine
• University of Nebraska
• University of Texas
• University of Vermont
• University of Wisconsin
• Washington County Museum of Fine Arts
• Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, DE
• Worcester Art Museum, MA
  

IV. Exhibitions

• 1930 Macbeth Gallery, New York, Paintings of Wyoming Days and Nights by Ogden Pleissner
• 1933 Macbeth Gallery, New York
• 1935 Doll and Richards, Boston
• 1936 Macbeth Gallery, New York
• 1937 Doll and Richards, Boston
• 1939 Macbeth Gallery, New York
• Grand Central Art Galleries, New York
• 1941 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, An Exhibition of Contemporary Water Colors
• 1943 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• 1944 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, American Air Forces Art Exhibit
• 1947 International Salon of the Chrysler Building, New York, Significant War Scenes by Battlefront Artists
• 1975 Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, Recent watercolors and oils by Ogden Pleissner
• 1984 Sportsman’s Edge Gallery, New York
  

V. Memberships

• Allied Artists of America
• American Watercolor Society, Honorary Member
• Anglers’ Club of New York, Honorary Member
• Art Commission, National Museum of American Art, Honorary Member
• Art Students League
• Artists Fellowship, Trustee
• Audubon Artists of America
• Baltimore Watercolor Club
• The Century Association
• Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, Honorary Member
• Knickerbocker Artists
• Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, President and Director
• National Academy of Design, Vice President
• National Arts Club
• National Society of Literature and Art
• Philadelphia Watercolor Club
• Royal Society of Art
• Salmagundi Club
• The Shelburne Museum, Trustee
• Southern Vermont Artists
• St. George Society of New York
  

VI. Notes

1. Henry McBride, “A Good Academician,” New York Sun, October 21, 1984.
2. Pleissner, quoted in Peter Bergh, The Art of Ogden M. Pleissner (Boston: D.R. Godine, 1984), p. 33.
3. Enid Nemy, “What’s Doing In; Bermuda,” New York Times, October 10, 1999.

VII. Suggested Resources

• Bergh, Peter, The Art of Ogden M. Pleissner. Boston: D.R. Godine, 1984.