Portrait of Mrs. Louise Carleton Putnam, 1902
by Irving Ramsay Wiles (1861–1948)27 3/16 x 20 15/16 inches
Signed and dated upper right: Irving R. Wiles / 1902
Information
Provenance
The artist
Mrs. Louise Carleton Putnam, acquired from above, 1902
Private collection, California, by descent from above
Sale, Christie’s, Los Angeles, California, April 28, 2004, lot 39, from above
Private collection, Montclair, New Jersey, acquired from above
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 2020
Private collection, Massachusetts, acquired from above, 2020
Literature
Geoffrey K. Fleming, Irving Ramsay Wiles, N.A. 1861–1948, Portraits and Pictures, 1899–1948 (Southold, NY: Southold Historical Society, 2010), 90.
Related Work
Miss Julia Marlowe, 1901, oil on canvas, 74¼ x 55¼ inches, inscribed, signed, and dated upper left: Miss Julia Marlowe / Irving R. Wiles 1901; inscribed, dated, and signed lower left: Copyright 1901 / by Irving Ramsay Wiles; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Note: The Putnam family was descended from the Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam, who famously remarked “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” Mrs. Putnam’s son would become Chairman of the Board of Delta Airlines. This portrait bears some stylistic resemblance to Wiles’s celebrated portrait of the actress Julia Marlowe, painted the year before.
Artist Biography
A master of both portraiture and landscape painting, Irving Ramsay Wiles used an expressive palette and brushwork in the impressionist tradition.
By Nina Sangimino
I. Biography
II. Chronology
III. Collections
IV. Exhibitions
V. Memberships
VI. Notes
VII. Suggested Resources
I. Biography
Irving Ramsay Wiles was destined to become an artist; his father Lemuel Maynard Wiles was a landscape painter who studied under William M. Hart and Jasper Francis Cropsey. Shortly after Irving’s birth in Utica, New York, the Wiles family moved to New York City in order for
