Morgan Martin
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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, WILMETTE, ILLINOIS
Lot 83
Guy Carleton Wiggins(1883-1962)Winter's Day at the Plaza 25 1/8 x 30 1/8 in. (63.8 x 76.5 cm.)
26 May 2022, 14:00 EDT
New YorkUS$50,000 - US$70,000
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Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883-1962)
Winter's Day at the Plaza
signed 'Guy Wiggins NA' (lower right) and inscribed with title, signed again, and dated '1955' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30 1/8 in. (63.8 x 76.5 cm.)
Painted in 1955.
signed 'Guy Wiggins NA' (lower right) and inscribed with title, signed again, and dated '1955' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30 1/8 in. (63.8 x 76.5 cm.)
Painted in 1955.
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, acquired circa 1955-60.
By descent from the above to the present owner.
The son of tonalist painter John Carleton Wiggins, Guy Carleton Wiggins was born in Brooklyn but spent a portion of his childhood in England, where he regularly accompanied his father on painting trips around Europe, and in Olde Lyme, Connecticut, where his family kept a summer home. By 1915, both John and Guy would become mainstays of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Wiggins' received his first formal academic training at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before transferring to the National Academy of Design, where he studied under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Under the tutelage of Chase and observing the other artist's painting in the Impressionist style at Old Lyme, including Childe Hassam, Wiggins developed his own style which merged the French technique with the American cityscape. No other artist is more synonymous with portraying New York City in the winter than Guy Carleton Wiggins.
In a 1924 interview published in the "Detroit News", Wiggins recalled the story of how he painted his first New York City snow scene, "One cold, blustering, snowy winter day (1912), 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." Among his most celebrated subjects are Trinity Church, The New York City Stock Exchange, the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue, and the Plaza Hotel, as seen in the present work. Based upon the vantage point, Wiggins was most likely sitting in the Grand Army Plaza on the northwest corner of Central Park South and 5th Avenue when he executed this work. In the foreground, two horse drawn carriages are waiting for tourists in front of the Pulitzer fountain outside of the Plaza hotel to the right. Figures are bracing themselves against the wind and snow as the cross the street and trudge on the sidewalks as buses continue down 5th Avenue to the left. In the distance, you can see the two spires of St. Patrick's Cathedral in the upper left. Just past the trees in the plaza at midground is the Bergdorf Goodman building with its old copper roof with the green verdigris patina.