Irving Ramsey Wiles
American, 1861-1948
The Dock, circa 1927
Signed I...Wiles (ll); inscribed on an old label affixed to the frame The Dock/Irving Wiles, Peconic, Long Island/N.Y./20 x 26; stamped Ex. P.A.F.A., inscribed CM 3021 and N.A.D./Pa Acad/Milch/Macbeth/Nat. Arts/Club on the stretcher
Oil on canvas
20 1/4 x 26 inches

Provenance:
The artist
Emma Austin Yawkey Gardner Ouerbacker, Louisville, KY; thence by descent to the current owner

Exhibited:
New York, National Academy of Design
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1928, #258, The Dock
New York, Macbeth Gallery
New York, National Arts Club
P. Jackson Higgs, Inc. Gallery, New York, 1933

Irving Wiles found refuge at his home and studio, "The Mooring," on Indian Neck in Peconic, Long Island, where he summered beginning in 1895. The tranquil countryside and scenic waterways of the bucolic North Fork offered abundant inspiration for an artist actively engaged during the winter months as a skilled and fluid portraitist.

The present work depicts the Wiles family dock, with the artist's daughter, Gladys, a frequent model for her father, gazing into the sparkling waters of Peconic Bay. The land visible at the horizon is likely Shelter Island. In the distance are what appear to be Wiles's own yawl - a two-masted sailboat - as well as the runabout used by Gladys herself. Both vessels, as well as the Wiles dock, are also depicted in The Gale, another work of the same period, reproduced in International Studio (November, 1927, p. 63).

In November, 1927, Dana H. Carroll discussed Wiles's marine paintings and praised his knowledge of sailing ships in an article in International Studio: "Whenever a person with a feeling of sympathy toward the sea has come upon one of the rarely exhibited marine paintings by this portrait-painter, the observer has stopped, looked and listened - listened for a sharp order to sailors or for the music of a sailors' chantey, or even for the moaning of the tide." (Dana Carroll, "The Marine Paintings of Irving Wiles," International Studio, November 1927, pp. 61-65. The artist's personal copy of the article is held in the Wiles Family Collection of Papers, Southold Historical Society, Southold, New York.)

Related both chronologically and conceptually to the works discussed in the article, The Dock was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1928. It is listed on page 144 of the artist's handwritten notebook, Records of Sales - Portraits & Pictures 1910-1948 (Collection of the Southold Historical Society, Southold, Suffolk County, New York).

We are grateful to the Southold Historical Society and its Director, Geoffrey K. Fleming for so generously sharing archival information and assisting in cataloguing this lot.

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