WOODBURY ANTIQUES & FINE ART

Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948)

Backdoor of the Studio

14 by 16 inches, oil/canvas, signed lower left

Titled verso in the artist’s hand in a period exhibition label

Original frame

Provenance:

            Mr. and Mrs. Dauth, Indian Neck, Peconic, NY, (neighbors of the artist)

            By Descent to their grandson, a former United States Attorney

Exhibited:

            National Arts Club (prize), no date inscribed verso

            Irving Ramsey Wiles, son of artist, Lemuel Maynard Wiles, grew up near his father’s studio on Washington Square in New York City. The father was pleased with his son's artistic talent and encouraged him to enroll at the Art Students League. At the League, the young Wiles studied under William Merritt Chase, who had the greatest impact on his painterly style. Wiles went abroad to France in the early 1880’s where he studied at the Academie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1834-1911) and Gustave Rudolph Boulanger (1824-1888). Wiles also took classes at the Aademie Colarossi where he was said to have won a silver medal.[1] Later he entered the private atelier of Carolus Duran (1838-1917), perhaps best known for the success of his most famous pupil, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).

            After two years of study in Paris, Wiles returned to New York in the spring of 1884,[2] supporting himself as an illustrator. In the 1890s, he began to earn an income as a painting instructor. During the 1890s, Wiles established himself as one of the best young portraitists and figure painters on the East Coast.  Wiles enjoyed a successful career, winning numerous, important artistic prizes. By 1895, Wiles and his father established a summer school across Peconic Bay from William Merritt Chase’s school in Shinnecock Hills, and by 1910 the artist purchased a home in Peconic on the North Fork of Long Island, where he spent his summers until his death in 1948.

            Wiles work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, NY; the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; New-York Historical Society, New York, NY; Terra Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; and many others.[3]

            By the very presence of a handwritten label on the reverse of the fine period Salon style frame, Wiles considered Backdoor of the Studio to be a plein air painting of great note. Painted on his property in the Indian Neck neighborhood of Peconic, NY, the painting was either given to, or purchased, by his neighbors just down the (still) dirt road, Mr. and Mrs. Dauth. From there the painting descended in the family (surviving the Hurricane of 1938, note the other example by Wiles in the family’s collection with a gazebo pictured that did not survive that storm) where it hung until recently on the walls of their grandson’s summer home in nearby Nassau Point. It has never been on the market.

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