Discouraged (Idleness)

Provenance

Private collection

[With] Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York, New York

Private collection, acquired from above, by 1981

[With] Debra Force Fine Art, New York, New York

Private collection, New York, New York

Exhibited

(Possibly) The Detroit Club, Michigan, 1889, no. 1377

Society of American Artists, New York, New York, Twelfth Exhibition of the Society of American Artists, April 28, 1890–May 24, 1890

Debra Force Fine Art, New York, New York, New Yorkers and Their City, March 11–April 30, 2021

Literature

Catalogue of the Twelfth Exhibition of the Society of American Artists (New York: The Art Interchange Press, 1890), 26, no. 203.

Related Works

Interior of William Merritt Chase’s Tenth Street Studio, oil on canvas, 26 x 36 inches, signed lower right; Private collection

The Student, 1910, oil on canvas, 30⅝ x 25¼ inches, signed upper left; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Her Leisure Hour, ca. 1925, oil on canvas, 27¼ x 22½ inches; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Note: In this work, Irving Ramsay Wiles depicts the studio of his mentor, impressionist painter William Merritt Chase, at the famed Tenth Street Studio Building. The unique building held studios for some of the most prominent nineteenth-century artists and Chase’s studio was well-known as a place of splendor—with rare objects, ornate rugs, and imported porcelain filling the space. Wiles surrounds the elegantly dressed figure with these wonderous items as she stares contemplatively ahead towards her canvas.