In Advance of This Weekend’s Snowstorm
I love this 1950 portrait of this elegant lady in red in the snow with her dog and the Arch as backdrop, painted by Guy Carleton Wiggins. Entitled Stroll in Washington Square, it was sold at Sotheby’s in 2001. Wiggins liked to portray snowy Washington Square in many of his paintings.
Guy Carleton Wiggins studied at the Old Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut “established in 1899 by American painter Henry Ward Ranger, in its time [it was] the most famous art colony in the United States, and the first to adopt Impressionism.”
In 1937, Wiggins established his own art school in the nearby town of Essex, Connecticut. Wiggins’ work is included in many collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Guy Carleton Wiggins lived from 1883-1962. His son, Guy Arthur Wiggins, is now in his ’90s, and, according to a 2011 article in the New York Times on this family of painters, worked out of a studio on nearby West 4th Street.