Clinton Ogilvie was a landscape painter who was born into a wealthy New York family. He studied with James M. Hart , a painter in the Düsseldorf tradition. The careful observation and minute detail of Ogilvie’s early paintings undoubtedly derived from Hart and John F. Kensett, whose studio Ogilvie often visited.

Ogilvie began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1861 and was elected an associate in 1864. During the 1860s, his landscapes of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Boston Athenaeum.

In 1866 he made the first of several trips to Paris. He married in 1872, and in 1879 he spent four years in Europe with his wife and child. In the winters they settled in Nice or Mentone, where he made outdoor studies. His later paintings were mainly of European scenes, but he did not adopt the Barbizon style that was popular at the time, instead maintaining his meticulous finish and detailed treatment in his works.

He returned to New York in about 1883 and remained there until his death in 1900.