Paintings
Irving Ramsey Wiles
American, 1861-1948The Whaleship Wanderer, New Bedford
Oil on canvas20 by 24 in. W/frame 29 by 33 in.
Note:
It is a fine example of Wiles’ bold impressionistic style used to capture the famous New England whaler, Wanderer. The 300 ton whaling bark ‘Wanderer’ was built at Mattapoisett Massachusetts in 1878. She measured 116 feet in length with a beam of 27 feet and drew of 15 feet below her waterline. She is famous as the last whale ship to sail out of New Bedford and was driven ashore and wrecked during a hurricane at Cuttyhunk on Buzzard’s Bay in the early 1920’s.
Provenance:
Private Collection New York
National Academy of Design
Vallejo Gallery, Newport Beach, CA.
Private Collection Palm Beach, FL
Alexander Avenard Collection
Le Trianon Fine Art & Antiques
See Artist Bio below.
Irving Ramsey Wiles
American, 1861-1948The son of artist Lemuel Maynard Wiles, Irving Wiles became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of America’s Gilded Age. Though he created many beautiful landscape paintings and watercolors, he is perhaps best remembered as a portraitist. Among his clients were Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryant, Mrs. Edward Redfield, and actress Julia Marlowe, whose portrait was said to have caused as much of a sensation as its subject.
Born in Utica, New York and educated at Sedgwick Academy in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Wiles originally considered becoming a professional violinist. He studied art as a teenager with his father, and had his first exhibition at the National Academy of Design at the age of eighteen. He went on to study at the Art Students’ League with James Carroll Beckwith and William Merritt Chase. He developed an enduring friendship with Chase, who chose Wiles to complete the portrait commissions left unfinished at the time of Chase’s death; Wiles was widely considered to be Chase’s successor. Wiles also studied in Paris with Carolus-Duran, whose dramatic influence in many of his portraits is visible, and at the Academie Julian with Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger.
On his return to New York in 1884, Wiles made illustrations for Century, Harper’s, and Scribner’s magazines. He taught at his studio and at his father’s Silver Lake Art School in New York. He participated in many exhibitions, among them shows at the Paris Salons, the Society of American Artists, Brooklyn Art Association, Corcoran Gallery, Newport Art Association, Boston Art Club, the American Water Color Society, and the National Academy of Design, where he received the Hallgarten Prize and was elected a full member in 1897.
He was also a frequent exhibitor at national expositions such as the 1893 Columbian, the St. Louis Exposition (1904), the Paris Expositions of 1889 and 1900; the Appalachian Exposition (1910); Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo (1901); and San Francisco’s Pan-Pacific Exposition (1915), winning at least four gold medals, ten prizes, and awards from various venues.
Today Wiles’ paintings are in museum collections in Europe and throughout the U.S., including the National Portrait Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, Metropolitan Museum, Smithsonian, the Butler Institute of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the DeYoung Museum, West Point Military Academy, and many others.