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Richard Emil (or Edward) Miller
1875–1943
BirthplaceSt. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
Death placeSt. Augustine, Florida, United States of America
BiographyRichard E. Miller specialized in decorative images of bourgeois women in interiors bathed by indirect natural light. Fascinated by art-making at an early age, Miller began studying in the rigorous program at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in his native St. Louis, Missouri, while still a teenager. He worked as a newspaper illustrator and exhibited his works in St. Louis, winning several awards and a scholarship that enabled him to travel to Paris for further study in 1899. Miller joined the large number of American artists enrolled at the Académie Julian, an independent art school. A year later, he won a third-place medal in the prestigious annual exhibition known as the Paris Salon, the first of numerous awards and honors from institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. With the exception of a few short visits home, Miller remained in Europe for a decade and a half.
Miller’s early work in Paris included landscapes and scenes of Parisian nightlife, but he soon focused on the female figure in decorative compositions influenced by the iconoclastic American artist James McNeill Whistler. Miller became active in expatriate artists’ circles in Paris while exhibiting his work widely at home and teaching at the private Colarossi academy. In 1906 he began working in the Normandy village of Giverny, long the site of an international colony of artists practicing the bright color and loose brushwork of impressionism. There, Miller taught an annual summer painting class for American women art students, one of whom, Harriet Adams, became his wife in 1907. Along with his American artist friends Frederick Frieseke and Lawton Parker (1868–1954), Miller was an important member of the “Giverny Group,” who exhibited together under that name in New York in 1910. These artists painted family and friends in flower-filled gardens and hired models posing nude. Miller’s interpretations were distinguished by his preference for interior settings lit by indirect natural light, and for compositions structured by architectural elements.
A dispute with his Giverny landlord and neighbor is said to have precipitated Miller’s departure from the village: he spent the summers of 1912 and 1913 in the Brittany village of St.-Jean-du-Doigt. With the outbreak of World War I, the artist returned briefly to St. Louis and then moved to Pasadena, California, a newly developing art center. He settled, finally, in the lively artists’ community of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Miller’s works continued to meet with critical and financial success, and in 1915 he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, a mark of his prestige in the mainstream of American art. In addition to occasional teaching, he took on numerous commissions for formal portraits and completed several decorative projects, including a series of commissioned murals for the Missouri State Senate Chamber in Jefferson, Missouri. During the last two decades of his career, Miller traveled widely, visiting France for the last time in 1922. In 1940 he began spending the winters in St. Augustine, Florida, where he died three years later at the age of sixty-seven.
Miller’s early work in Paris included landscapes and scenes of Parisian nightlife, but he soon focused on the female figure in decorative compositions influenced by the iconoclastic American artist James McNeill Whistler. Miller became active in expatriate artists’ circles in Paris while exhibiting his work widely at home and teaching at the private Colarossi academy. In 1906 he began working in the Normandy village of Giverny, long the site of an international colony of artists practicing the bright color and loose brushwork of impressionism. There, Miller taught an annual summer painting class for American women art students, one of whom, Harriet Adams, became his wife in 1907. Along with his American artist friends Frederick Frieseke and Lawton Parker (1868–1954), Miller was an important member of the “Giverny Group,” who exhibited together under that name in New York in 1910. These artists painted family and friends in flower-filled gardens and hired models posing nude. Miller’s interpretations were distinguished by his preference for interior settings lit by indirect natural light, and for compositions structured by architectural elements.
A dispute with his Giverny landlord and neighbor is said to have precipitated Miller’s departure from the village: he spent the summers of 1912 and 1913 in the Brittany village of St.-Jean-du-Doigt. With the outbreak of World War I, the artist returned briefly to St. Louis and then moved to Pasadena, California, a newly developing art center. He settled, finally, in the lively artists’ community of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Miller’s works continued to meet with critical and financial success, and in 1915 he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, a mark of his prestige in the mainstream of American art. In addition to occasional teaching, he took on numerous commissions for formal portraits and completed several decorative projects, including a series of commissioned murals for the Missouri State Senate Chamber in Jefferson, Missouri. During the last two decades of his career, Miller traveled widely, visiting France for the last time in 1922. In 1940 he began spending the winters in St. Augustine, Florida, where he died three years later at the age of sixty-seven.