Collection Spotlight: New Additions to the Collector's Gallery

MAACM’s Collector’s Gallery represents the passion for the art of collecting and the vision of MAACM’s founder, Rudy Ciccarello. This gallery showcases not only extraordinary examples of the decorative arts collection but also highlights the fine arts collection mounted in beautiful handcrafted frames.

Notable new acquisitions to the fine arts collection of the Two Red Roses Foundation include artists Louis Comfort Tiffany, Irving Ramsey Wiles, and Charles Allen Winter, whose work can now be seen in MAACM’s collector’s Gallery.

As he is mostly recognized as one of the greatest forces in the Art Nouveau style as a genius decorator and designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was first a painter. Tiffany studied under great American painters such as George Inness and Samuel Colman, and also trained as a painter of narrative subjects in Paris. At the the age of 19, he was a founding member of the American Society of Painters in Water Color and a regular exhibitor at the National Academy of Design. In 1868, Tiffany traveled around the world to places such as North Africa, Spain, and Paris where his artistic tastes would be greatly influenced by various cultures, exotic landscapes, and architecture and translated them into early oils and watercolors. Upon returning to America, he adopted the American Orientalist style, inspired mostly by color and light. These passions would later inspire his fervent experimentation for new leaded-glass window techniques.

Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948) became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of America's Gilded Age. Though he created many beautiful landscape paintings and watercolors, he is perhaps best remembered as a portraitist. Among his clients were Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryant, Mrs. Edward Redfield, and actress Julia Marlowe. Wiles painted in an impressionist style which focused on developing light and shadow within his work. He once said that “Color is whatever light makes it, and light changes and transforms everything—color, line, everything. Light is beauty.” Today Wiles' paintings are in museum collections in Europe and throughout the U.S., including the National Portrait Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, Metropolitan Museum, Smithsonian, the Butler Institute of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the DeYoung Museum, West Point Military Academy, and many others.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Charles Allen Winter (1869-1942) was an accomplished illustrator, landscape and seascape painter. His work is characterized by his use of bright colors and impressionist style. He studied initially at the Cincinnati Art Academy with Vincent Nowottny, Lewis Lutz, and Thomas S. Noble, before winning a three-year, all-expense paid foreign scholarship competition which took him to Paris. There, he studied at the Académie Julian under Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Gabriel Ferrier. During the early twentieth century, like many painters, Winter began experimenting with various color theories and technical approaches to painting using geometric principals to strengthen his compositions. In Pandora, the strong triangular composition is anchored by the golden rectangle at the center. This interplay of geometric shapes creates strong lines and a robust form, filling the canvas.