Encompassing a distinguished array of works carefully curated over the course of decades, this important Private Pennsylvania Collection offers a glimpse of American art in its infancy. At the turn of the century, the nation began to establish its own voice and style through institutions such as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia), the American Academy of the Fine Arts (New York), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), ushering in what is often referred to as the “American Century.” Beginning in the early 1800s with the Western Expansion and the Louisiana Purchase and continuing through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, the burgeoning United States was becoming a political and cultural world power. Its artists were exploring the untamed lands of the Northeast, establishing the Hudson River School and American Impressionism while also utilizing newfound wealth and travel opportunities to study abroad in Europe, bringing French and English influences back home where they were shaped into a style that was uniquely American. Through the establishment of The National Academy of Design (New York) and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, these movements flourished and encouraged collaboration and conversation between artists, laying the foundation for American Art as it progressed through the 20th century and into today.
Guy Carleton Wiggins 1883–1962
American Impressionist painter Guy Carleton Wiggins was born in Brooklyn in 1883 to Carleton Wiggins, a renowned artist known for his Barbizon-style landscapes. With his father’s guidance and an early exposure to the art world, Guy Wiggins quickly discovered his artistic inclination. It was only natural that he would go on to pursue a career in the field. Wiggins began studying architecture at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before transferring to the National Academy of Design to study painting under the direction of William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Working on commissioned portraits and landscapes in New York, Connecticut and New England, Wiggins rose to prominence early in his career.
In 1912, Wiggins painted the first of his signature scenes: snowy New York City. When reminiscing about this moment in a 1924 interview with Detroit News, he said: “One cold, blustering, snowy winter day, I was in my New York studio trying to paint a summer landscape. Things wouldn’t go right, and I sat idly looking out of a window at nothing. Suddenly I saw what was before me—an elevated railroad track, with a train dashing madly through the whirling blizzard-like snow that made hazy and indistinct the row of buildings on the far side of the street. Well, when I gave an exhibition a short time afterward…the winter canvases were sold before anything else. In a week, so to say, I was established as a painter of city winter scenes, and I found it profitable. Then suddenly I felt a revulsion against them and I stopped. Everyone said I was a fool and was shutting the door upon opportunity, maybe fame. Just the same I couldn’t go on with winter stuff and that was all there was to it.”
Wiggins settled in Old Lyme, Connecticut in the 1920s, where he was an active member of the Old Lyme Art Colony alongside his father Carleton, Childe Hassam and other talented Impressionist artists. Wiggins carried on the regional artistic tradition and founded the Guy Wiggins Art School shortly thereafter. His academy was in operation seasonally in New Haven and Lyme until he relocated full-time to Essex, Connecticut in 1937 and founded Essex Painters Society. He passed away in 1962 at the age of 79.
Although best known for depicting snow-covered New York City, Guy Wiggins had a passion and a loving eye for capturing the soft and peaceful scenes that he came across. Wiggins was awarded the Norman Wait Harris bronze medal from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917, and a full membership at the National Academy of Design in 1919. Additional accolades include the Flagg Prize, the Cooper Prize and the Atheneum Prize from the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts where he served as a president, the Turnbull Prize and the Isidor Prize from the Salmagundi Club in New York, and the J. Francis Murphy Memorial Prize from the Rhode Island School of Design. Paintings by Wiggins are highly sought after to this day and tend to achieve high prices at auction. His work may also be found in the permanent collections of major public institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few.
Auction Results Guy Carleton Wiggins
