Guy Carleton Wiggins

Guy Wiggins (1883-1962) was one of the most beloved American Impressionist painters of the early and mid-twentieth century, whose atmospheric snow scenes of New York City brought him wide public recognition. Although Wiggins painted many New York snow scenes that would establish his prominence in American artistic circles, it was his paintings of his beloved Old Lyme and Essex, Connecticut that were much more personal to the artist. Taught first by his father, Carleton Wiggins, and later by William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri at the National Academy of Design, Wiggins's work was enthusiastically received from the very beginning of his career. Recognition came at the age of twenty when he became the youngest artist to have work accepted into the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and in 1919 he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design.

When Wiggins was a student at the National Academy, Impressionism was the accepted basis of academic discipline. The artistic license of such masters as Childe Hassam and other members of The Ten inspired the young artist, and his style blossomed within this movement as he pursued the Impressionist idiom with independent and passionate dedication. This commitment was further deepened when Wiggins made the artists' colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut, his summer home from 1920 to 1937. It was in Old Lyme in the early years of the twentieth century that American Impressionism had germinated and grown from a French-influenced aesthetic into something wholly native to the American landscape.

Wiggins's Connecticut paintings capture the specific quality of New England light and terrain with an intimate familiarity born of many years of direct observation. His characteristic pictures depict the small towns, coastal villages, wooded hillsides, and river landscapes of the Old Lyme and Essex region, all rendered with the warm painterly sensibility that placed him within the important continuing tradition of American Impressionist landscape.

His celebrated New York snow scenes, capturing Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, Trinity Church, the New York Public Library, and other beloved city landmarks under falling snow, brought his work to broad public audiences and secured his enduring reputation. Wiggins's paintings are held today in the Metropolitan Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and other major American collections.