While active as a varied painter in the late 19th century, his career reached new heights in 1902, when his portrait of the actress Julia Marlowe was exhibited at the National Academy. The elegant and successful grand manner portrait bolstered him to fame, and from 1902 until the late 1920s, when he retired due to infirmity, Wiles continually received portrait commissions from America's elite.[7]
Wiles would go on to paint notable Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan.[8] While prized today for his paintings and portraits of women, Wiles was considered accomplished in the field of male portraiture during his life: in 1919 he was selected by the National Art Committee to paint portraits for a pictorial history of World War I.[9]
Toward the end of his career Wiles was noted for the plein-air land and seascapes he painted at his home in Peconic, New York. Wiles died penniless (without so much as headstone) in Peconic on July 29, 1948.[10]
^"Irving Wiles". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved May 9, 2021. In his heyday—the first quarter of the twentieth century—Irving Wiles was one of the most successful portrait painters in the United States.
^Chase, William Merritt. "Letter to Artists," 467. Described in Painting Professionals: Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930, 84 (Swinth, Kirsten; ISBN0-8078-4971-5).
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