Guy Carleton Wiggins

Guy Carlton Wiggins was born in Brooklyn on February 23, 1883. His father, landscape painter Carlton Wiggins, encouraged his son to paint as early as age four. The family traveled to England during Wiggin's early years and eventually returned to New York.

Wiggins studied architecture at the Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute, but left to pursue his art career at the National Academy of Design and the New York School of Art, where he studied with William Merritt Chase and Reni Henri.

Wiggins was able to earn a livelihood, early in his career, through commissioned paintings in England and America. He met his first wife, Dorothy Stuart Johnson, in Wimbledon. The couple married in 1914. Their son, Guy Arthur Wiggins, also a talented painter, was born in 1920. The couple divorced, and Wiggins married Dolores Gaxton Hughes in 1945.

It was from his studio in New York’s Washington Square Park, that Wiggins began to paint the winter landscapes that got him recognized as one of America’s finest Impressionist painters. At age 20, Wiggins became one of the youngest artists to have a work included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met bought his winter landscape Metropolitan Tower.

Wiggins settled into the Old Lyme Art Colony, in Lyme Connecticut, where he worked alongside his father and other fine artists, like Childe Hassam.

Wiggins was awarded the Norman Wait Bronze Medal from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917 and elected full member of the National Academy of Design in 1919. Wiggins belonged to New York’s Salmagundi Club, one of the oldest art clubs in America. In 2011, the club held an exhibit of the paintings of all three Wiggins. Wiggins' work can be found in the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Met and other major collections around the world.