Ogden Minton Pleissner was born in Brooklyn, New York
in 1905. Despite an urban upbringing, he
showed an early aptitude for sporting art, recounting, “When I was about five
years old, … [M]other had just had the stairway redecorated … with scenic
wallpaper that had gondolas and boats and things like that on it…This work had
just been done and my mother went out one day and I got hold of a crayon and
put people in all the boats going up the stairs. I got a terrific licking for my efforts. That was probably my first adventure into the
world of fine arts.”
As a teenager, Pleissner’s family decided he looked
“kind of peaked” and “not very husky,” so it was time for him to get out of the
city. They sent him to summer camp in Wyoming for two summers,
where he learned to fish, camp, and hike.
During his third summer, spent at a dude ranch, he began drawing and
sketching the great outdoors. His Wyoming experiences
would impact the rest of his life, and he returned regularly.
Back
in New York City, Pleissner was educated at the Brooklyn Friends School before
studying figure painting and portraiture at the Art Students League in
Manhattan. Two of his most influential
teachers were George Bridgman and Frank DuMond.
During the 1930s, Pleissner taught at the Pratt Institute and had one of
his paintings of Brooklyn Heights purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. He also began shooting with the
encouragement of Eversley Childs, a collector of his paintings whom he met
while fishing in Wyoming. This completed
Pleissner’s transformation from city boy to sporting artist.
During World War II, Pleissner painted for the
United States Air Force and Life Magazine. His turn of duty in the Aleutian Islands led to a
switch from oils to watercolors, as the harsh climate in Alaska required a faster-drying medium. Though he was never properly trained in
watercolors, he found the principle behind the mediums the same. After his time in Alaska,
he was sent to Europe where he documented the
destruction of the war. However, he also
saw the beauty of the untouched areas, which led him to return regularly over
the course of his life. He sketched in Italy and France,
and hunted and fished in England
and Scotland. Pleissner utilized his sketches and
experiences as inspiration to complete paintings back in his New
England studios.
In 1947 Pleissner built a house in Pawlet,
Vermont, where he and his wife Mary spent
summers instead of traveling to Wyoming. Pleissner had a great appreciation for the
East Coast and enjoyed watching the seasons change in New
England. He also felt the
need to be closer to the New York
art world. For the remainder of his
life, Pleissner traveled, painted, hunted, and fished. His landscape subjects reflect his lifestyle
and interests, imbuing them with honesty and familiarity. He writes, “A fine painting is not just the
subject . . . It is the feeling conveyed of form, bulk, space, dimensionality,
and sensitivity. The mood of the picture, that is most important.”
Pleissner’s work is included in more than thirty
public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum,
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and hangs in the offices of the Pentagon,
West Point, and the Air
Force Academy.
Literature: Bergh, Peter. The Art of Ogden Pleissner. Boston, MA: David R.
Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1984.
