Leaving the Shop

In his carefully drawn etching Leaving the Shop, Kenneth Hayes Miller presents a pair of fashionably dressed friends who link arms and converse as they exit a women's clothing shop between display windows. Miller lavished attention on the attire of these robust women: each wears a stylish cloche hat and a dress similar to those on display; each sports a tasteful purse; the woman on the right also has an umbrella dangling from her left arm. Visible above her shoulder at right is another female shopper who gazes at items on display. Within the darkened arched doorway of the shop, ceiling lights accent the interior space while also marking space receding in the background.

Miller frequently depicted women shoppers, a subject inspired by the everyday life he observed near his New York studio on Fourteenth Street, a bustling neighborhood filled with stores. Although Leaving the Shop conveys an air of informality, as if the artist simply captured a scene he happened to encounter, Miller composed this picture with the rigor of the old master artists he admired. To make the women appear more monumental, he positioned them centrally in the foreground, framed in their light-colored hats against the dark background, with the arched shop doorway recalling the arched top edges of many early Renaissance paintings. Although the women are not idealized, Miller's portrayal evokes a timeless quality and the abstract idea of modern American womanhood. In looking to ordinary life for artistic inspiration, particularly the modern phenomenon of the urban female as consumer and worker, Miller influenced his pupils Isabel Bishop, as demonstrated in her Noon Hour (TF 1996.84), and Reginald Marsh, as in his The Barker (TF 1995.44).

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

(Re)Presenting Women, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 2001–January 13, 2002.

The Left Front: Radical Art in "the Red Decade," 1929–1940,  Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer) Venues: Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois, January 17–May 22, 2014; Gray Art Gallery, New York University, New York, New York, January 13–April 4, 2015. [exh. cat.]

 Terra Collection-in-Residence, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, September 15, 2022–September 30, 2026.

   

Tyler, Francine. Kenneth Hayes Miller: Etchings and Drypoints. (exh. cat., Associated American Artists). New York: Associated American Artists, 1979. No. 87 (state iv/iv).

American Master Prints from the Betty and Douglas Duffy Collection. Washington, D.C.: The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 1987. Ill. no. 64.

Master Prints of Five Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection. (exh. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts). Detroit, Michigan: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990. No. 79, p. 100.

Graphic Excursions: American Prints in Black and White, 1900–1950; Selections from the Collection of Reba and Dave Williams. (exh. cat., American Federation of Arts). Boston, Massachusetts: David R. Godine, Inc. in association with The American Federation of Arts, 1991. Ill. no. 26 (black & white).