A native of New York, Guy Wiggins enrolled in drawing and architecture classes at the Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute, and studied painting under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri at the National Academy of Design. Wiggins was most directly influenced by Childe Hassam's celebrated scenes of New York. A prolific painter throughout his life, Wiggins received wide recognition from an early age. In 1912, at the age of twenty, he was the youngest American artist to have a work acquired for the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The present lot is one of the New York winter street scenes for which Wiggins is best known, though this painting is executed on panel as opposed to his typical canvas. The artist began producing works in this style in the 1920s and continued until his death in 1962. In the present work, Wiggins illustrates the hubbub of New York’s Herald Square amidst a winter storm. At right, an elevated train car cuts through the snow to 33^rd Street station of the IRT Sixth Avenue Line. The elevated train line was closed in 1938 and this stop was replaced by the 34th Street-Herald square subway station. Therefore, though not dated, Herald Square in Winter was likely painted prior to 1938.