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Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection IRVING RAMSEY WILES (1861-1948) Sunshine and...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:200,000.00 - 300,000.00 USD
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection IRVING RAMSEY WILES (1861-1948) Sunshine and...
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
IRVING RAMSEY WILES
(1861-1948)
Sunshine and Shadow
signed "Irving R. Wiles" (lower left)
oil on panel
13 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. (40.5 x 35.5 cm)
painted circa 1895 <p>Estimate: $200,000-300,000 <p> Provenance
Private Collection, New York Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1979 <p> Exhibited
New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery, American Impressionism, 1979, no. 44 Perth, Art Gallery of South Australia; Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia; Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Wellington, New zealand, National Art Gallery, Auckland, New zealand, Auckland City Art Gallery, Christchurch, New zealand, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, America & Europe: A Century of Modern Masters from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 1979-1980, no. 16 (illustrated) Rome, Musei Vaticani; Lugano, Villa Malpensata, Maestri Americani della Collezione Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1983-1984, no. 59 and 57 respectively (illustrated) Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts; Denver, The Denver Art Museum; San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute; New York, IBM Gallery of Arts and Sciences; San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art; Palm Beach, The Society of the Four Arts, American Masters: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, October 28, 1984-April 13, 1986, no. 59 (illustrated) Barcelona, Palau de la Virreina, Mestres Americans del segle XIX de la Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 1988, cat. no. 81 (illustrated) Kobe, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum; Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art; Hiroshima, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Two Hundred Years of American Paintings from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, January 5-August 25, 1991, no. 26 Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, Les Impréssionistes Américains, 2002, cat. no. 59 <p> Literature
Barbara Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Nineteenth-Century American Painting, London, 1986, p. 294, no. 102 (illustrated, p. 295) <p> Irving Wiles spent many summers on the North Fork of Long Island, at Peconic, just across the bay from the Shinnecock home of his friend and mentor, William Merritt Chase. At "The Moorings," the elegant studio, breezeway and cottage he built in 1895, Wiles and his family would spend extended summer holidays, from May until October. These yearly sojourns provided a respite from the exhausting round of society portrait-making in New York City, and a chance to paint en plein air. With willing family members serving as models and the pastoral Long Island landscape at his doorstep, Wiles produced some of his most memorable Impressionist works at Peconic. <p>Sunshine and Shadow probably depicts the artist's wife, Mary Lee, painted during one of the first summers of the Wiles' residence at "The Moorings." The sunny, seaside landscape is familiar from many of Chase's views of Shinnecock. So is the masterly technique: The low, leafy bushes, pale, sandy expanses and distant hills are depicted with expert, painterly strokes, recreating the effects of bright sunlight. <p>These effects are viewed - not from outside the painting-but from its deeply shaded foreground, in which Mary Lee sits reading on a rustic bench. The contrast of shadow and light, and the reproduction of the optical effects each creates, was of particular interest to Irving Wiles. In Sunshine and Shadow, the dark, solid greens and browns and pinks of the shadowed foreground are painted completely differently from the high-keyed, broken color of the sunny landscape beyond. To further accentuate the contrast, Wiles has given his wife a filmy black hat, which shades her face as she turns away from the light, back toward the viewer. With every stroke of his brush, this painting illustrates Wiles' observation, expressed in 1927: "Color is whatever light makes it. Light changes and transforms everything."
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