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Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

American, 1883-1962

Guy Carleton Wiggins, the son of famed Barbizon School painter Carleton Wiggins, was a prodigious talent who, at age 20, was the youngest artist to have a work in the permanent collection at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Best known for his landscape paintings of New York City’s wintry urban scenes, Wiggins is regarded as one of the finest American Impressionist landscape artists of the 20th century.  

Born in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York, Wiggins displayed an early talent for drawing and, in 1900, attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now the New York University Tandon School of Engineering) to study architecture and drawing. However, he shifted his focus to painting, which he studied at the National Academy of Design under teachers Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase.  

Recognition for Wiggins’s artistic talent came early in his career. In addition to his work being included at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1913, Wiggins won the prestigious Norman Wait Harris Bronze Medal from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917. He also won several awards from the Art Club of Philadelphia, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and the Salmagundi Club.

In 1920, Wiggins established a summer home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he became part of a group of painters who were developing their own form of Impressionism. Wiggins, however, had already established his own Impressionistic style that was based on French Impressionism and influenced by American Impressionist Childe Hassam

During the 1930s, Wiggins divided his time between Connecticut and New York, painting Connecticut landscapes and New York street scenes such as his Winter in New York. Although some critics say his pastoral Connecticut landscapes were his best works, his snowy streetscapes set in Manhattan — brightened by pops of color in Wiggins’s depictions of green cars and rust-red building facades — are among the artist's most notable.

In 1937, Wiggins established the Guy Wiggins Art School in Essex, Connecticut. In the following years, he traveled nationally, painting scenes of Montana and Massachusetts as well as creating two paintings of the White House during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration. One of the paintings hung in the Oval Office during Eisenhower’s term and was eventually moved to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Texas.  

Wiggins’s paintings remain part of public and private collections throughout the United States and elsewhere, long after his death in 1962. They are also highly sought-after among collectors of American Impressionist and early 20th-century art.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of authentic Guy Carleton Wiggins paintings.

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Artist: Guy Carleton Wiggins
5th Avenue Storm at 42nd Street by Guy Carleton Wiggins
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in New Orleans, LA
Guy C. Wiggins 1883-1962 | American 5th Avenue Storm at 42nd Street Signed "Guy Wiggins" (lower right) Oil on canvas No other painter so poetically captured the beauty of winter i...
Category

20th Century Post-Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street - American Impressionist Cityscape Oil by Guy Wiggins
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Signed and titled figures in cityscape oil on panel circa 1920 by American impressionist painter Guy Carleton Wiggins. This wonderful piece depicts a view of the New York Public Library in the United States of America during a winter snowstorm. Several cars and pedestrians can be seen passing along Fifth Avenue. A fantastic work in the artist's distinctive style. Dimensions: Framed: 16"x18" Unframed: 8"x10" Provenance: Roughton Galleries - Texas. This work is included in the catalogue raisonne under reference number GW00179 Guy Carleton Wiggins was the son of Carleton Wiggins, a painter of landscapes and animals. Wiggins first studied at his father's Art School in Connecticut and later enrolled in the National Academy of Design where he trained with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, after a brief spell studying architecture at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. At the age of 20 he was already well known and was the youngest American artist to have a work accepted for the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Prior to the onset of World War I, Wiggins travelled to Europe and painted the English countryside. In England he met his future wife Dorothy Stuart Johnson. The couple returned to the US and set up home in Connecticut. He established a year-round art school, the Guy Wiggins Art School, in Essex. He liked to spend his winters in New York and summers in Connecticut. Wiggins' paintings reflect the influence of American Impressionism, a style of painting he would have encountered during his summers in Old Lyme. He is known for his snowy New York...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Oil, Panel

Central Park, Winter
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower left: Guy Wiggins / Guy Wiggins; on verso (photo available): CENTRAL PARK. WINTER. / GUY WIGGINS N.A. / 1936.
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

American Impressionist Artist Guy C Wiggins 1883-1962 Landscape Oil Painting
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Chesterfield, NJ
Rocks & Trees Oil/Board 12 x 16 image Signed lower left although hard to read. No restoration housed in a reproduction frame. The painting is in beautiful condition and is much softe...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Oil

"Hudson Street, New York City, " Guy Wiggins, Winter Street Scene Impressionism
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in New York, NY
Guy C. Wiggins (1883 – 1962) Hudson Street, 1935 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Grand Central Art Galleries, New York Private Collection, Nebraska By des...
Category

1930s American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Gloucester
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Milford, NH
A fine impressionist harbor scene in Gloucester, Massachusetts by American artist Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883-1962). Wiggins was born in Brooklyn, New York, and had a long and success...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Winter at the Plaza
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Missouri, MO
Guy Wiggins (American, 1883-1962) Winter at the Plaza Signed Lower Right 20 x 24 inches 27.5 x 31.5 inches Guy Carleton Wiggins adopted the bright palette and lively brushwork of the impressionist movement, and is best known for his New York City snow scenes and landscapes in the area of the Impressionist colony of Old Lyme, Connecticut. The son of artist John Carleton Wiggins, Guy Wiggins was born and grew up in Lyme where his parents had purchased a country house and studio. Beginning 1917, both father and son gave their addresses as Old Lyme, which by then was an unofficial artist colony, dating from 1903 when Childe Hassam began painting there. Wiggins spent part of his childhood in England and on the Continent where his father, landscape artist John Carleton Wiggins, took his family during the 1890s. Back in America, Guy entered the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn to study architecture. Soon he decided to become a painter and transferred to the National Academy of Design, beginning a life-long affiliation with that institution. Wiggins studied with noted artists of the Old Lyme Colony who were developing their own style of impressionism - combining the French traditions and emerging American technique. He may have begun to paint his signature winter scenes after an unsuccessful attempt to paint a sunny landscape in his New York studio in winter. His combination of the bright colors of urban life with flickering snowfall and the city's massive architecture (aided perhaps by some earlier training he had had in architecture) proved extremely successful. His New York cityscape painting, Metropolitan Tower, purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1912, supposedly made Wiggins the youngest American artist to have work enter that museum's permanent collection. "In the painting, the tower dominates the middle distance, but it is seen through an atmospheric haze created by the winter weather and by smoke coming from the numerous buildings that surround it." (Pfeil). He won prizes from the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the Salmagundi Club and the Art Club of Philadelphia, and in 1917, he won the prestigious Harris Bronze medal from the Art Institute of Chicago. Wiggins set up his canvas in a variety of geographical locations including Long Island and the Bay of Fundy in Canada as well as around New England. In 1937, Wiggins established his own art school in the nearby town of Essex. Wiggins was a painterly Realist who worked on a wide variety of subjects: robust and well-loved scenes of New York City in the snow or in the spring sunshine, still-life, delicate flower compositions and the street-scenes and landscapes of foreign lands. Cartier regularly reproduces his New York winter scenes for its "Holiday Card Collection". Some other critics have felt that his repeated application of a similar approach to snow scenes in various locales of New York became somewhat repetitive in contrast to the spontaneity of his Old Lyme summer landscapes. Both his New York snow scenes and delicate New England scenes...
Category

20th Century American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

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Previously Available Items
Midtown Storm - New York - Impressionist Oil, Snowy Cityscape by Guy Wiggins
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A wonderful oil on board circa 1930 by American impressionist painter Guy Carleton Wiggins. The work is a view of Midtown New York engulfed in a snow storm. Pedestrians line the sidewalks clutching umbrellas for shelter and the visibility of the tall buildings overlooking the street and the yellow and green buses is obscured by the heavy white snow. Signature: Signed lower left Dimensions: Framed: 15"x13" Unframed: 11"x9" Provenance: Private California collection / John Moran...
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City Storm - New York City Library - Cityscape in Snow Oil by Guy Wiggins
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
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An historic illustration by American impressionist painter Guy Carleton Wiggins of figures in a snow storm outside the New York City Library. Oil on panel. Signed lower right and signed, titled and dated 1918 verso. Dimensions: Framed: 9.5"x11.5" Unframed: 8"x10" Provenance: Private collection - California Guy Carleton Wiggins was the son of Carleton Wiggins, a painter of landscapes and animals. Wiggins first studied at his father's Art School in Connecticut and later enrolled in the National Academy of Design where he trained with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, after a brief spell studying architecture at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. At the age of 20 he was already well known and was the youngest American artist to have a work accepted for the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Prior to the onset of World War I, Wiggins travelled to Europe and painted the English countryside. In England he met his future wife Dorothy Stuart Johnson. The couple returned to the US and set up home in Connecticut. He established a year-round art school, the Guy Wiggins Art School, in Essex. He liked to spend his winters in New York and summers in Connecticut. Wiggins' paintings reflect the influence of American Impressionism, a style of painting he would have encountered during his summers in Old Lyme. He is known for his snowy New York...
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1910s American Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

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Park Avenue Winter
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Miami, FL
In this work by Wiggins, New York City is again shown with snowy streets, snowy cars and with American Flags on full display. This is perhaps rush hours which accounts for the dense vehicular and pedestrian traffic. What is different here is that Wiggins paints Park Avenue...
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1930s Post-Impressionist Guy Carleton Wiggins Art

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Misty Day
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Located in Wiscasset, ME
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1883, Guy Wiggins was the second in a three-generation family of painters. Wiggins’ early training began under his father Carleton Wiggins (American, 18...
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Cascade Mountain Landscape
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Located in Storrs, CT
12 x 17 (sheet 16 x 22 1/4). Edition 25.A fine impression printed on the full sheet of cream wove paper with deckle edges. Signed in the stone. -----------------------------------...
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Cascade Mountain Landscape.
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Storrs, CT
Lithograph. 12 x 17 (sheet 16 x 22 1/4). Edition 25, #4. A fine impression printed on the full sheet of cream wove paper with deckle edges. Signed in the stone. ------------------...
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Lithograph

At the Library, Winter
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Located in New Orleans, LA
Signed "Guy Wiggins NA" (lower right); signed and titled (en verso) Oil on panel No other painter so poetically captured the beauty of winter in New York City as Guy Wiggins. Reg...
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New York in Winter
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
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This oil on canvas scene of New York in Winter by Guy Carlton Wiggins depicts St Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue in subtle earth tones with pops of green, yellow, red and blue. Sig...
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Cascade Mountain Landscape: Glacier National Park, Montana
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in Storrs, CT
Cascade Mountain Landscape: Glacier National Park, Montana. c. 1924. Lithograph. 12 x 17 (sheet 16 1/8 x 22 3/8). Edition 25. A fine impression ...
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Guy Carleton Wiggins art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Guy Carleton Wiggins art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Guy Carleton Wiggins in oil paint, paint, canvas and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the Impressionist style. Not every interior allows for large Guy Carleton Wiggins art, so small editions measuring 8 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Robert Spencer, John R. Grabach, and Paul Bernard King. Guy Carleton Wiggins art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $21,422 and tops out at $175,000, while the average work can sell for $57,500.

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