Richard E. Miller
Encyclopedia
Richard E. Miller was a major American Impressionist painter and a member of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists. Miller was primarily a figurative painter, known for his paintings of women posing languidly in interiors or outdoor settings. He is best described as a Decorative Impressionist. The term Decorative Impressionism
was coined in 1911 by the art writer Christian Brinton to describe the work of Miller's friend and Givery colleague Frederick Friseke, but it accurately describes the art of several members of the Giverny colony. Miller grew up in St. Louis, studied in Paris, and then settled in Giverny. Upon his return to America, he settled briefly in Pasadena, California and then in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts
, where he remained for the rest of his life. Miller was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York and an award winning painter in his era, honored in both France and Italy, and a winner of France's Legion of Honor. Over the past several decades, he has been the subject of a retrospective exhibition and his work has been reproduced extensively in exhibition catalogs and featured in a number of books on American Impressionism
.
, which was then one the largest and most prosperous American cities. His father, Richard Levy Miller, was a well-respected civil engineer from Pennsylvania, who specialized in bridges and his mother was Esmerelda Story, a native of Missouri. Miller began drawing and painting as a boy and first worked as an assistant to George Eichbaum, a portrait painter. He studied art at the Washington University School of Fine Arts (f. 1879), first in evening classes in 1891, then as a full-time student in 1892. This was the first art school in the United States that was part of a university and it relied on the French Beaux-Arts method of curriculum that is now described as the Atelier Method
. The courses he took in Drawing, Modeling, Painting, Artistic Anatomy, Perspective, and Composition would have been very similar to what a student in France would have received at that time. Miller was known for his work ethic and excelled at the School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Halsey C. Ives, the first director of the school and perhaps Lawton Parker.
The Chicago Worlds Fair occurred while Miller studied in St. Louis and it is believed that he attended the fair and saw the thousands of contemporary works that were on exhibit, including works by the artists of the emerging American Impressionist movement and the Tonalist School. During his five years at the School of Fine Arts, Miller won many of its prizes and began to exhibit locally in 1894. Because the school was attached to the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts and on the campus grounds of the school, students had the opportunity to see important historic works as well as exhibitions which included works from contemporary movements like American tonalism via the works of John La Farge, (1835–1910), and American Impressionism
via the works of Theodore Robinson
, (1892–1896), whose works were on view there during the 1895–1896 season.
At Washington University, Miller studied with Edmund H. Wuerpel
, an alumnus of the school, who had recently returned from Paris, and whose own works ('spare landscapes') were highly influenced by the French Barbizon School
as well as the works of Whistler. Because of his teachers' orientation and the popularity of what was called the "Tonal School" at that time, Miller's earlier works were of quiet landscapes, Tonalist in orientation. By 1897, he was working as an illustrator for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and was saving money to go to Paris to further his studies. He was subsequently honored by receiving the first scholarship to study in Paris awarded by the St. Louis School of Fine Arts Student Association.
and Benjamin Constant
, two accomplished academic painters who had an excellent reputation in the Salon. The large, ambitious works Miller produced at the turn of the century were primarily scenes of Paris cafe life. In these works of stylish Parisian women, the figures are handled in an almost academic fashion with only some areas of the background painted in an indistinct manner.
(1897–1992), but it is not known how long he remained there- probably just a few months- because he was back in Giverny that summer.
Miller painted landscapes on occasion, but they are rare in Miller's artistic production. The women in his paintings were often depicted looking in a mirror or with a necklace in their hands, doing some sort of activity to keep them from being completely idle. The art historian William Gerdts, who has written most extensively on the American Impressionist movement, compared Miller to his friend, Frederick Frieseke: "Miller almost always stressed drawing and structure more than his colleague. The models he chose were quite distinct from Frieseke's, more poignant and lovely, less in the Renoir mode." Late in his career, his work turned darker in palette and more somber in subject and these paintings are not in the same demand as the sunnier depictions of idle women.
Decorative Impressionism
Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The...
was coined in 1911 by the art writer Christian Brinton to describe the work of Miller's friend and Givery colleague Frederick Friseke, but it accurately describes the art of several members of the Giverny colony. Miller grew up in St. Louis, studied in Paris, and then settled in Giverny. Upon his return to America, he settled briefly in Pasadena, California and then in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
, where he remained for the rest of his life. Miller was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York and an award winning painter in his era, honored in both France and Italy, and a winner of France's Legion of Honor. Over the past several decades, he has been the subject of a retrospective exhibition and his work has been reproduced extensively in exhibition catalogs and featured in a number of books on American Impressionism
American Impressionism
Impressionism, a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors, was practiced widely among American artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-An emerging artistic style from Paris:...
.
Youth and training
Richard Edward Miller was born and raised in St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, which was then one the largest and most prosperous American cities. His father, Richard Levy Miller, was a well-respected civil engineer from Pennsylvania, who specialized in bridges and his mother was Esmerelda Story, a native of Missouri. Miller began drawing and painting as a boy and first worked as an assistant to George Eichbaum, a portrait painter. He studied art at the Washington University School of Fine Arts (f. 1879), first in evening classes in 1891, then as a full-time student in 1892. This was the first art school in the United States that was part of a university and it relied on the French Beaux-Arts method of curriculum that is now described as the Atelier Method
Atelier Method
Atelier is the French word for "workshop", and in English is used principally for the workshop of an artist in the fine or decorative arts, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students and apprentices worked together producing pieces that went out in the master's name...
. The courses he took in Drawing, Modeling, Painting, Artistic Anatomy, Perspective, and Composition would have been very similar to what a student in France would have received at that time. Miller was known for his work ethic and excelled at the School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Halsey C. Ives, the first director of the school and perhaps Lawton Parker.
The Chicago Worlds Fair occurred while Miller studied in St. Louis and it is believed that he attended the fair and saw the thousands of contemporary works that were on exhibit, including works by the artists of the emerging American Impressionist movement and the Tonalist School. During his five years at the School of Fine Arts, Miller won many of its prizes and began to exhibit locally in 1894. Because the school was attached to the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts and on the campus grounds of the school, students had the opportunity to see important historic works as well as exhibitions which included works from contemporary movements like American tonalism via the works of John La Farge, (1835–1910), and American Impressionism
American Impressionism
Impressionism, a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors, was practiced widely among American artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-An emerging artistic style from Paris:...
via the works of Theodore Robinson
Theodore Robinson
Theodore Robinson was an American painter best known for his impressionist landscapes. He was one of the first American artists to take up impressionism in the late 1880s, visiting Giverny and developing a close friendship with Claude Monet...
, (1892–1896), whose works were on view there during the 1895–1896 season.
At Washington University, Miller studied with Edmund H. Wuerpel
Edmund H. Wuerpel
Edmund H. Wuerpel was an American Tonalist painter and an important art educator who was head of the Washington University School of Fine Arts for many years. He was also a friend of James Allen McNeil Whistler who helped spread the influence of the "Tonal School" in the Midwest...
, an alumnus of the school, who had recently returned from Paris, and whose own works ('spare landscapes') were highly influenced by the French Barbizon School
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
as well as the works of Whistler. Because of his teachers' orientation and the popularity of what was called the "Tonal School" at that time, Miller's earlier works were of quiet landscapes, Tonalist in orientation. By 1897, he was working as an illustrator for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and was saving money to go to Paris to further his studies. He was subsequently honored by receiving the first scholarship to study in Paris awarded by the St. Louis School of Fine Arts Student Association.
Paris
When Miller went to Paris he was already a trained painter and was rapidly making progress at the Academie Julien, the private academy where he and many other American artists studied. He lived a modest existence with other students on the left bank. There he was acquainted with the Chicago painter, Lawton Parker, where Parker helped him get his start in Paris. Miller's work was critiqued by Jean-Paul LaurensJean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens , was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.Born in Fourquevaux, he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexandre Bida...
and Benjamin Constant
Benjamin Constant
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...
, two accomplished academic painters who had an excellent reputation in the Salon. The large, ambitious works Miller produced at the turn of the century were primarily scenes of Paris cafe life. In these works of stylish Parisian women, the figures are handled in an almost academic fashion with only some areas of the background painted in an indistinct manner.
The Giverny Colony
Miller seemed to turn to highly decorative works of attractive young women in their dressing gowns or kimonos about 1904 and these are the works that he is best known for. He would spend summers in the American Art Colony of Giverny, which grew around Claude Monet's estate at about 1906, where he became close friends with Frederick Frieseke, another Impressionist painter. While a number of the American artists in Giverny taught, most of their instruction was informal. In contrast, Miller had an excellent reputation as a teacher and a number of his students followed him to Giverny, including John "Jack" Frost, the son of the well known illustrator A. B. Frost, who followed him to Giverny in 1909. That same summer he met a young woman painter from Maine, Harriette Adams, who would later become his wife. Miller was back in his hometown of St. Louis in the spring of 1910, where he taught the young prodigy Theodore LukitsTheodore Lukits
Theodore Nikolai Lukits was a California portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of some of the most glamorous actresses of the Silent Film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and his pastel landscapes have all...
(1897–1992), but it is not known how long he remained there- probably just a few months- because he was back in Giverny that summer.
Life in Pasadena
Richard Miler moved back to the United States about the time World War I began. Because of his friendship with Guy Rose in Giverny, Miller moved west to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena to teach at the Stickney Memorial School of Art. When Miller settled in Pasadena, he could not find a studio that was pleasing, with the type of filtered light he liked to use for his painting. So instead, he painted at the home of the wealthy painter and patron of the arts, Eva Scott Fenyes. A number of the paintings he is known to have painted in California are clearly sited there. There is a fountain and a pool at the Fenyes mansion that appear in several of Miller's paintings. Additionally, he painted a portrait of Mrs. Fenyes' grand daughter and a large nude which is in the collection of the Pasadena Museum of History today, located on the grounds of the Fenyes estate.Provincetown, Massachusetts
Miller moved to Provincetown in 1917.Assessment
Richard Miller's works are among the most sought after of the American Impressionists. The works in the greatest demand date from the beginning of his Giveny period through the 1920s. Of his classic American Impressionist paintings, production is divided between works that were done in Paris, usually in darker tonalities, the brightly colored works done in Giverny, a brief but productive period in Pasadena and then his years in Provincetown, Massachusetts.Miller painted landscapes on occasion, but they are rare in Miller's artistic production. The women in his paintings were often depicted looking in a mirror or with a necklace in their hands, doing some sort of activity to keep them from being completely idle. The art historian William Gerdts, who has written most extensively on the American Impressionist movement, compared Miller to his friend, Frederick Frieseke: "Miller almost always stressed drawing and structure more than his colleague. The models he chose were quite distinct from Frieseke's, more poignant and lovely, less in the Renoir mode." Late in his career, his work turned darker in palette and more somber in subject and these paintings are not in the same demand as the sunnier depictions of idle women.
Prominent students
- John "Jack" Frost
- Theodore LukitsTheodore LukitsTheodore Nikolai Lukits was a California portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of some of the most glamorous actresses of the Silent Film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and his pastel landscapes have all...
(1897–1992) - Pauline Palmer
- Christian von SchneidauChristian von SchneidauChristian von Schneidau was a well known California portrait painter who was recognized for his paintings of Hollywood stars and the Los Angeles elite. During the Roaring Twenties he painted Mary Pickford and other figures from the film industry as well as a number of outdoor figures done in the...
- Harriette Adams Miller
- Mildred Giddings Burrage
- Leon A. Makielski
See also
- Decorative ImpressionismDecorative ImpressionismDecorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The...
- American ImpressionismAmerican ImpressionismImpressionism, a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors, was practiced widely among American artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-An emerging artistic style from Paris:...
- French Impressionism
- En plein airEn plein airEn plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism...
- California Plein-Air PaintingCalifornia Plein-Air PaintingThe term California Plein-Air Painting describes the large movement of 20th century California artists who worked out of doors, directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California in the first three decades after the...
- California Art ClubCalifornia Art ClubThe California Art Club , founded in 1909, is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. It celebrated its centennial in the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved from the Painters Club of Los Angeles...
- Art colonyArt colonyright|300px|thumb|Artist houses in [[Montsalvat]] near [[Melbourne, Australia]].An art colony or artists' colony is a place where creative practitioners live and interact with one another. Artists are often invited or selected through a formal process, for a residency from a few weeks to over a year...
- Académie JulianAcadémie JulianThe Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
External links
- http://www.californiaartclub.org/ Calilifornia Art Club, Home to Several Giverny Impressionists
- http://giverny.org/ Village of Giverny Web Site
- http://giverny-impression.com/ Giverny Impressionism Web Site
- http://giverny.org/museums/american/guide/index.htm Musee American in Giverny