Howard Giles

Howard Giles was an artist and an art teacher. He was a member of the Century for thirty-five years, and until the last decade he used to be a familiar figure there. He studied under Denman Ross, learning about color arrangements and theories of composition, and became well known as a painter of picturesque scenes and an illustrator more or less of the Bellows school; but after he met Jay Hambridge, the teacher of what was called “Dynamic Symmetry,” his style changed entirely and the geometric design of pictures absorbed his interest. He worked on this for some years and then decided that the formula was not adequate; and so he developed a system of design of his own called “the twelve directions,” and on that prescription he operated the rest of his life. He had great skill in drawing, so he could make almost any system work; and his figures had a marvelous ease and gracefulness even when made to conform to the twelve directions.

Giles was always frail, and these last years he lived most all the time at South Woodstock, Vermont. He had a lovely old brick house with gardens, and there he could be found, happy and content. He was really at home in all the world, though fastidious and discriminating about it, and he always talked easily with all sorts and conditions of men. He had an eagerness and veneration for beauty that is vouchsafed only to artists, and to associate with him made one’s heart leap up like seeing the rainbow in the sky. He was a pure and shining spirit whom we have lost a while.

George W. Martin
1956 Century Association Yearbook