Ogden Pleissner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1905. When he was eleven a friend gave him a paint box filled with all the colors in the world. His father was very interested in the arts, especially music, and his mother was an accomplished violinist who had studied in Germany. Despite growing up in the city, Pleissner was attracted to the outdoors and as a teen he visited dude ranches in Wyoming where he sketched from life.

After high school in Brooklyn he spent four years studying figure painting and portraiture at the Art Students League, and wishing he were out-of-doors. He has painted open-air pictures ever since. In the 1930s he began using watercolor as his primary medium. In 1932 the Metropolitan Museum in New York City purchased one of his paintings, making him the youngest artist at that time in the Museum collection.

During World War II he painted pictures of the Aleutian bases for the Air Force and Life Magazine and later of the Normandy invasion. He was equally at home in New York City, rural Vermont or fishing for salmon in the Northwest. He died in 1983.