Ogden Pleissner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1905. Encourage by his father, Pleissner became interested in the arts as a young boy. Pleissner was drawn to nature and the outdoors and traveled to Wyoming where he sketched some of his first drawings. Pleissner gained his arts training at the Art Students League. In the 1930s he began painting plein aire works, using watercolor as a medium. It’s quick drying quality require immediacy and precision. Unlike oil painting, it required an entirely new set of skills as an artist. His acclaim as an artist quickly flourished after the Metropolitan Museum in New York City purchased one of his paintings.

Like many artists, during World War II Pleissner became a government painter and captured scenes such as the Normandy invasion. He often painted hunting scenes, fishing scenes, cityscapes, and the landscape of the rural East Coast. Pleissner’s ability to convey perspective was uncanny. A fisherman himself, his realistic depictions of the natural world are almost photographic in their precision.

Pleissner’s paintings are included in the museum collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York’ Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Brooklyn Art Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California’ among others.