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. The artist began producing works in this style in the 1920s and continued until his death in 1962. Executed in 1935, St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a relatively early example. In the present work, Wiggins shows New York’s Roman Catholic cathedral amidst the office buildings of midtown Manhattan on a snowy day.