Marking the Moment ― The Art of Allen Blagden

“There was a long bench in the living room of our house. And it was full of paper, crayons, watercolors—all the essentials for creating art.” And so begins Allen Blagden’s account of his career, training with his father, an art teacher at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. From his earliest days, art informed his life, taking him to the National Serengeti Park in Kenya, to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, to the South of France, England, and Ireland, and to his beloved Adirondacks and Maine. His watercolors, renowned for their color, compositions, and technique, are held in permanent museum collections across the United States and by countless private collectors.From detailed pencil drawings that illuminate texture and form, he builds on that foundation to create memorable, accurate renditions of his subjects, and his field of vision is encompassing, ranging from portraits of friends, to landscapes, to birds and mammals of all shapes and sizes. An intense sensitivity and precision pervades his work, elevating even the simplest objects to an emotional crescendo. Keeping in the tradition of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth, these works are timeless classics.

Born in 1938, Allen Blagden began formally painting in 1948 at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, under the tutelage of his father, artist Thomas Blagden. He received his BFA from Cornell University in 1962 and held his first solo show soon after at the Janet Nessler Gallery in New York City, winning the Allied American Artist’s Prize for Best First One Man Show of the Year. He hasn’t ceased working since, holding countless group and solo shows, continuing up until the present day.John Wilmerding is currently a Professor of American Art at Princeton University, a visiting curator in the department of American Art at the Met, a member of the Board of Trustees at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and serves on advisory boards for committees for Smithsonian Studies in American Art and Harvard University Art Museums. Wilmerding is also the author of many books and catalogues on American Art.