Irving Ramsey Wiles (American, 1861-1948)
Irving Ramsey Wiles was born in upstate New York. He was introduced to painting by his father, artist Lemuel Wiles (1826 to 1905), but it was not until he studied at New York’s Arts Students League that he determined to make his father’s profession his own. It was here that Wiles first met his mentor, William Merritt Chase (1849 to 1916), and the two remained lifelong friends. After two years at the Arts Students League Wiles went to Paris to study at the Academie Julian, perhaps at the suggestion of another of the League’s teachers, Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851 to 1938).
Like many of his late 19th century contemporaries, Wiles used the “new” vitality of the Impressionist brush stroke and palette to express the beauty of the world around him. Not unlike Chase, Wiles was known for his dexterous and energized portraits, which often idealized his subjects by placing them in elegant attire and settings. Wiles often depicted his female subjects in white dresses. Out of doors, they were frequently drenched in warm sunlight and dashed with blue brushstrokes of shadow, a technique regularly employed by Chase, as well as John Singer Sargent (1856 to 1925) and Frank Weston Benson (1862 to 1951).
Although portraiture was considered his forte, Wiles also painted the hills and shores of Long Island. In the late 1890s Wiles built a studio and cottage on the shores at Peconic, and he summered there regularly with his family. Here he found painting the out-of-doors a pleasant change from the bustle of portrait painting in the city.
Information courtesy of Skinner, Inc., May 2010.
Irving Wiles was born in 1861 in Utica, New York. He studied at the Sedgwick Institute in Massachusetts and later at the Art Students League.
In about 1895, Irving Wiles and his father, the painter Lemuel Maynard Wiles, began conducting summer art classes on the North Fork of Long Island. Irving Wiles subsequently purchased land and built a studio at Peconic, in the same area, where he continued to paint until his death in 1948. As Gary A. Reynolds wrote in his catalogue of Wiles’ work, “the landscapes he completed during the summer months at Peconic are perhaps the most complete explorations of [the Impressionist] aesthetic” [Irving R. Wiles, National Academy of Design, New York, 1988, page 22].
In the magazine International Studio in November, 1927, Dana H. Carroll observed that “Wiles loves the sea, in all its moods, and the ships the old-time seamen used to sail in. …He is never happier than when cruising, either in coastal bays or on the deep. So when he comes to paint the sea and ships he goes at it with love and understanding, and these added to his professional skill make his marine painting canvases a joy to behold.”
P4A acknowledges the assistance of Shannons Fine Arts Auctioneers in preparing this reference note.