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Ogden Minton Pleissner(1905-1983)A Farmhouse in Winter at Twilight
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale

Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer

Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Ogden Minton Pleissner (1905-1983)
signed 'Pleissner' (lower left)
watercolor on paper
sheet size 10 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (26.7 x 36.8 cm)
Footnotes
N.B.
Ogden Minton Pleissner was born in Brooklyn and began sketching as a child while on trips with his family to Wyoming, where he developed a deep appreciation for nature and landscape painting and sketching. He studied at the Art Students League of New York, focusing on landscapes of the American West and of New England. During WWII, Pleissner was stationed in the Aleutian Islands as a war artist; the wet conditions of the islands led Pleissner to shift from his previously used oil paints to primarily watercolor, which dried more quickly.
Pleissner's work is beloved for its genuine and intimate interest in the natural world and his attentive, atmospheric treatment of light and tone. The present work depicts a subject for which Pleissner was perhaps best known: the New England (and specifically Vermont) landscape. The intimacy and gentleness of the scene reflect Pleissner's sentiment that "Vermont is quite a different country. Out West we had the prairies and sagebrush and mountains and snow all summer. It is much bigger, dramatic country. This, I feel, is a softer country and much more friendly. I think that you can find most anything to paint here, all kinds of subjects, the dramatic and bucolic landscapes." Pleissner manages to make the present scene at once dramatic, in the shadowy forest background and expansive sky, and bucolic, in the soft yellow light and winding chimney smoke of the cabin. It evokes the silence and chill of a wintry early evening in the valley.
























