Ogden Minton PleissnerAmerican, 1905 - 1983 Over the course of many years, a considerable number of artists have endeavored to capture the essence of fly-fishing for salmon and trout, gunning for waterfowl, shooting ruffed grouse and woodcock, quail or driven grouse; however few have managed to equal the work of Winslow Homer, Frank W. Benson, A.L. Ripley, and Ogden Minton Pleissner. Ogden Minton Pleissner considered himself to be a “landscape painter who also likes to hunt and fish.” He is an artist whose beautiful renderings of the natural environment always leave out some detail for the mind’s eye to fill in, thereby drawing the viewer into the oil painting or watercolor. Pleissner felt that “a fine painting is not just the subject … it is the feeling conveyed of form, bulk, space, dimensionality, and sensitivity. The mood of the picture, that is the most important.” Thomas S. Buechner, an old friend and an authority on art history, has this to say about Ogden Pleissner: “There is a special joy in witnessing a champion performance – in tennis, politics, or in painting. Anyone who knows anything about recording the visual world in paint must be awestruck by Pleissner’s performance. Extremely complicated subjects are rendered so accurately, so spontaneously, so appreciatively that comparison with Homer and Sargent is inevitable … Catching a fish or fueling a plane may be the subject, but the picture is about an emotion that the artist has; he uses these things, arranges them, colors them, lights them to convey a mood … Pleissner invites us to transcend our focus on action to see the whole scene – quietly, and from a little distance.” Sporting art is exactly that, art with a sporting theme. There is obvious or hidden prey in the picture and game is depicted in a well-painted landscape that may also include a figure holding a rod or gun; or simply could be an image of a stream, river, marsh, moor or hillside where one senses that a fish or bird lies in waiting. Artists who have the potential to create great sporting art know well the habits of the wild creatures, and have committed to memory every detail of their habitats. These artists have experienced the thrill of an Atlantic salmon or a large trout taking a well-presented fly, the explosion of a bursting covey of quail, sunrise over a duck marsh, running the rapids in a canoe, or sleeping under the stars. Ogden Minton Pleissner is one of these men and his great skill as an artist can be recognized by the fine collection of his oils and watercolors illustrated in this collection. Peter BerghAuthor of The Art of Ogden M. Pleissner