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Auction: 19003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 241

An interesting 'double-issue' Great War pair awarded to Captain B. H. Wiles, 10th Duke of Cambridge's Own Lancers, attached Indian Army Reserve of Officers, the scion of an important artistic family who served in Iraq as an Official War Artist

British War and Victory Medals (2) (Capt. B. H. Wiles.), together with a British War Medal 1914-20 issued by the Government of India (Capt. C. H. Wiles.), note initial to third, very fine and better (3)

Bernard Harper Wiles was born in April 1883 at Cambridge, England, the son Henry Wiles, himself a Royal Academy gold medallist for sculpture (1869) and grandson of sculptor and marble mason, John Wiles. The second-youngest and perhaps most gifted of nine children, he taught and painted in Burma from 1911-13, before travelling extensively through the Middle East, North Africa and China in 1914.

Appointed as an Official War Artist, Wiles was commissioned and promoted Acting Captain on 27 August 1917. Seven of his paintings are held by the Imperial War Museum in London, including a watercolour of Baghdad, another of The Mosel Bridge, Persian Fishing Boats with a Warship, and Shepherd in the Desert.

Wiles returned to England after the war and spent the 1920's developing a fruit-growing and poultry business in Norfolk. He died at Brook House, Stratton Strawless, Norwich, on 10 September 1966, leaving effects to the value of £6000 to his widow Gwendoline Grainger Wiles; sold with copied MIC.

For further details of the Wiles family, many of whom became important sculptors and artists in their own right, please see:
http://wgwiles.com/html/other_wiles_artists.html


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Sold for
£130

Starting price
£50