One of the most esteemed painters of his generation, Irving Ramsey Wiles established a lifelong connection with the North Fork of Long Island when he built a home and studio there in 1895. "The Moorings" sat on a high bluff overlooking Peconic Bay, affording the artist abundant opportunity to observe the varied maritime activity before him. Though his schedule was crammed with portrait commissions and teaching at his summer art school, Wiles carved out the time to paint marine pictures such as White Sloop, which reveal his vast knowledge of -- and deep affection for -- the sea and its craft.

Wiles was by all accounts a skilled and enthusiastic sailor, and owned his own sailboat. He also collected highly detailed and accurate model ships, and even served as the first president of the Ship Model Society of New York. In addition to his own vessels, Wiles had access to the fleet of boats that dredged for scallops each season under sail on Peconic Bay, and often traveled to the neighboring town of Greenport to study boats in the busy harbor there. Nelson White, who knew the artist, alluded to the delight that Wiles found in the maritime activity around him when he wrote:

Perhaps the work of greatest significance which [Wiles] most truly did "con amore" was other than the portraiture which provided his livelihood. He painted remarkable marines and landscapes, mostly inspired by and painted at his home in Peconic [in Chapellier Galleries, Irving R. Wiles, 1861-1948 (1967), n.p.].

White Sloop exhibits Wiles' trademark fluid and elegant brushwork -- which earned him frequent comparisons to Sargent -- and finely-tuned color sense. The cool blue shadows of the clouds upon the bay's variable surface evoke the feel of a brisk, exhilarating day on the water, while also suggesting that the weather could change on a moment's notice. The novelist Theodore Dreiser observed in 1898 that Wiles' extraordinary ability had as much to do with what the artist chose to leave out of a painting as with what he decided to put in. As in the present work, Wiles' paintings delighted viewers by leaving their imaginations abundant room to roam ["Art Work of Irving R. Wiles," in Metropolitan Magazine VII, no. 4 (April 1898), p. 359].

His mentor (a resident of nearby Shinnecock) William Merritt Chase considered Wiles to be -- along with Sargent, Homer, Weir, Ryder, and Henri -- one of the most important American artists of the period [Katharine Cameron, The Artist as Teacher: William Merritt Chase and Irving Wiles (1994), p. 5]. He won numerous awards at the most important juried exhibitions of his day, and enjoyed vast critical and financial success. Yet in looking back at Wiles' career, scholars have lamented that the artist's remarkable achievements as a portraitist kept him from being able to paint more subjects of his own choosing, such as the present work. As one museum director observed:

Although the importance of Wiles' career as a portrait painter remains of great value, his works of general interest reveal much about the artist which cannot be said otherwise. The...marine scenes, studio subjects, landscapes, family subjects, and still-life subjects, demonstrate the magnificent ability of Wiles and his continuous search for truth. Wiles' concerns here are far greater esthetically than that which can be found in his portraiture." [Reilly P. Rhodes, in The Albrecht Gallery Museum of Art, The Art of Irving Ramsey Wiles (1972), p. 10]

George Albert Perret, former director of the Parrish Art Museum, declared Wiles' marines and landscapes works of "great charm and artistic significance," emphasizing his wish that the artist had been able to paint more of them [in Irving R. Wiles (1967), n.p.].

As a scarce symbol of Wiles' life in Peconic, White Sloop captures a fleeting moment in a place that held enormous personal resonance for the artist.

Although "The Moorings" no longer exists, the paintings Wiles did of the area in which he lived so long and loved so well are happily still with us. These paintings serve, as no words can, as an evocation of a time and place now lost in our modern, frenetic pace of life. [The Artist as Teacher, p. 26]

Wiles won numerous prestigious prizes in New York and at the Paris Salon. He was one of eight painters commissioned by the National Art Committee to paint the history of World War I. Both President Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryant sat for Wiles. Wiles became member of the Society of American Artists in 1887, the National Institute of Art and Letters, the American Art Association of Paris, the American Federation of Arts and the National Association of Portrait Painters. His work is housed in renowned collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; National Academy of Design Museum, and the New York Historical Society, New York, NY.