Niles Spencer

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(b Pawtucket, RI, 16 May 1893; d Dingman's Ferry, PA, 15 May 1952).

American painter. His family owned Slater Mill, which, under the ownership of Samuel Slater, had introduced a new water-powered technology to manufacturing. This helped to launch the USA into the Industrial Revolution. The Spencers prospered from manufacturing and Spencer's humanistic handling of the subject may have resulted from growing up in this industrial milieu. An art student from the age of 16 at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he studied with Charles Woodbury in Ogunquit, ME, during the summers of 1914 and 1915 and graduated from RISD in 1915. From 1915 to 1917 he studied with Robert Henri and George Bellows at the Ferrer School in New York. He painted at Ogunquit from 1917 to 1922 and at Provincetown from 1923 to 1930. From 1931 to 1941 he produced paintings of industry and New York, before turning to a geometric abstraction (1943-52). Throughout his career he returned to still-lifes as architectural compositions.

Spencer was best known for his urban landscapes, which in their subject-matter have been compared with the work of the Precisionists. Spencer, however, favoured looser brushwork and subtle tonalities. A reticent and introspective man, he did not promote his art and had only two one-man exhibitions in his lifetime-one at the Charles Daniel Gallery (1925 and 1928) and one at the Downtown Gallery (1947), both in New York. He received an honourable mention at the Carnegie International in 1930; he won a National Mural Competition in 1937 for the Post Office in Aliquippa, PA; and in 1942 he won a purchase prize in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Source: WENDY JEFFERS, "Niles Spencer," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, (Oxford University Press, Accessed March 18, 2004) http://groveart.com)