An extraordinary exhibition and sale will open on October 11 and run for three weeks to benefit the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut, Much of the family's major collection of the works of three generations of distinguished painters will be dispersed.

Carleton Wiggins (1847 - 1928), primarily a landscape artist, studied under George Inness and in France under the influences of the Barbizon School. He won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1894 and exhibited regularly at London's Royal Academy. His work was widely sought after upon his return to the United States. He was one of the original founders of the Old Lyme art colony.

His son Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883 -1962) adopted the bright palette and lively brushwork of the impressionist movement. He is best known for his New York City snow scenes, however his delicate New England scenes are also valued by collectors. He was the youngest American artist to have his work purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many major museums followed suit. Two of his paintings hang in the White House.

Guy A. Wiggins was born and grew up in Lyme, Connecticut, one of the most important centers of American Impressionism when that movement was in its heyday. The son and grandson of famous artists, he shares the distinction of being a third generation painter with members of only two other families in the history of American art: the Peales in the last century and the Wyeths in this.

Wiggins began painting as a child at his father's art school in Lyme. Although his first career was in the U. S. Foreign Service, Wiggins painted wherever he was stationed. While on assignment to The State Department in Washington he studied at The Corcoran Gallery art school and at The Sculptors' Studio.

He took early retirement from the Foreign Service in 1975 in order to paint professionally and enrolled at The Art Students' League in New York. There he studied under Robert Beverly Hale, Thomas Fogarty and other prominent teachers. Later he took his family to Europe and spent a year painting in the South of France and in Italy. Since then he has also recorded on canvas his impressions of Morocco, Portugal and Turkey.

Wiggins is a painterly Realist who works on a wide variety of subjects: robust and well-loved scenes of New York City in the snow or in the spring sunshine, still- lifes, delicate flower compositions and the street-scenes and landscapes of foreign lands. Cartier regularly reproduces his New York winter scenes for its "Holiday Card Collection"

Wiggins slide lecture, “Growing Up with the Impressionists of Old Lyme" has been enthusiastically received by audiences at colleges and art museums along the Eastern Seaboard fiom Connecticut to Georgia. In New York City, which is home to Wiggins during the winter, he lives in Greenwich Village where his father once had his studio. His summer home is an 18th Century farmhouse near Lambertville, New Jersey. He is a member of the National Arts Club and the Salmagundi Club, both in New York.

Guy A. Wiggins work is in four Connecticut and New Jersey Museums. He has had many one-man and group shows throughout the east and is listed in Who's Who in American Art and Who’s Who in theEast. His New York City scenes have been reproduced on Cartier's Christmas cards for two years with enthusiastic acceptance.

This is what some critics say about his work:

"Guy A. Wiggins, respects the broad lines of his forebears' achievements, but is clearly determined to be an interpreter of his own outlook in his own age. The glimpse we have of his talent - for an exhibition of this kind can give no more than that in respect to one individual artist - indicates a far wider horizon of artistic expression than theirs."

Nicholas King reviewing Three Generations of Wiggins show in Art World:

"Guy A. Wiggins draws upon an enormous artistic heritage, yet he is very much his own man. His cityscapes and landscapes are imbued with a sense of personal poetry. His treatment of still life ranges from softly lit interiors reminiscent of the 17th Century Dutch masters to a realistic, but sympathetic handling of objects that is early American in feelings.

Richard J. Boyle, author of American Impressionism.

Shirley C. Lally, 3rd generation in a family of art dealers, is Director of Chapellier Fine Art, which recently moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. Chapellier Galleries has been a champion of American art in New York since 1934.

ŠThe Fine Arts Trader 2009