Ogden Pleissner, American Artist of the Sporting World

By Frederica Templeton
Images courtesy of The American Museum of Fly Fishing

PleisnerThe land between Green and Taconic mountain ranges is a place of small rivers and streams, charming old played-out farms, fields and pastures that have gone by, crumbling stone walls, and abandoned orchards.  Still, it is our land and we love it. It is also iconic country to legions of fly fishermen and upland hunters even though most of them have never been here.  But they have seen this country painted superbly and with undeniable feeling.  Have, in other words, seen it through the eyes of a great artist who fished and hunted this little corner of the world, loved it intensely, and put that love into his paintings.

Ogden Pleissner never thought of himself as someone who did "sporting art."  He was not, emphatically, one of those hacks who turned out stylized stuff for the covers of catalogues and the numbered print racket.  He considered himself, with absolute legitimacy, a "painter of landscapes who also liked to hunt and fish."  His work has been compared, with justification, to that of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth. 

Still, while the sporting scenes made up only a small fraction of the body of his work, they have become exceedingly well known and sought-after by collectors and by sportsmen of means. Twenty five years after his death, it is fair to say that Pleissner is America's most celebrated painter of the sporting scene.  And since he hunted and fished close to forty seasons in southern Vermont, it is understandable that many of his most memorable paintings depict this country. 

Pleissner lived first in Pawlet and later in Manchester. When he wasn't out hunting with his many friends, he was in his studio capturing the richness of the local landscapes. His works can be seen in many museums and this summer the American Museum of Fly Fishing, located in Manchester just south of the Orvis store, will present a major retrospective of his sporting art.