Richard Edward Miller

Viola Miller & John Longmire, St. Louis (gift from the artist circa 1930)

Kathryn Longmire Thomson, St. Augustine, Florida (gift from the above circa 1950)

Carol Thomson & Judge Richard Burk, Palm Beach (by descent from the above in 1974)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Exh. Cat., New York, Jordan-Volpe Gallery, A Bright Oasis: The Paintings of Richard E. Miller, 1997, p. 57 (pictured in Miller's studio)

We wish to thank scholar Marie Louise Kane for providing the following essay:

This subject, a decoratively dressed comely woman in a sunroom, was one of Miller's most popular. He introduced the subject while working in France, where he studied and lived from 1899 to 1914. In his early years Miller painted pictures of old women or young serving maids in dark interiors. By 1908 he was painting fashionable women, often reflected in mirrors, in elegant interiors. In the 1910s, having spent several summers painting in Giverny and in Brittany, Miller heightened the light and color of his palette and began placing his alluring female models, colorfully clad and decorously posed, in boudoirs and sunrooms.

With the outbreak of World War I, Miller returned to the United States, staying for a short time in California, before finally settling in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1917. There he continued his practice of setting his models in studio-designed sunrooms. Seating his models in front of the windows and doors of his studio, opening to his garden, Miller then added assorted furnishings kept in his studio, such as textiles, apparel, a few key pieces of furniture and various knick-knacks, to suggest a sunroom setting. Some of these props are visible in the photograph of Miller in his studio: the wooden chaise, shutters, a parasol, and writing desk. The white railing seen behind the French doors in the painting appears in exterior photos of Miller's Provincetown house. Mildred Carpenter, wife of Miller's former student Fred Carpenter, who was a houseguest of the Millers in August, 1931, wrote of the studio: “The studio is in the yard – quite large, well lighted & workman like – 2 French window bays for posing models with the garden background” [Archives, St. Louis Art Museum].

The composition of Portrait of a Seated Woman Before a Mirror is similar to a number of other works Miller painted in Provincetown in which the model is seated in profile, facing left, dressed in a white, tiered skirt - with the blue chaise, rectangular mirror, and writing desk often included. This characterized Miller's method of working from his earliest days in Paris. He would use the same objects, kept in his studio, repeatedly. They were convenient props which he would vary by color, placement, and reaction to light, just as he altered his figures' poses slightly. He might also change the color of his models' hair to suit his color scheme. Miller was after decorative effect, not unvarnished reality. It should be noted that while the model in this painting is unknown, she is definitely not Miller's wife, or his daughter. Miller paid his models, some of whom he knew socially, such as Marjorie Ball, wife of his former student Robert E. Ball, who has been described as one of Miller's favorite models, or Josephine Young, daughter of William H. Young, a friend of Miller's and founder (1914) of the Provincetown Art Association.

Comparing Portrait of a Seated Woman Before a Mirror to such paintings as Interior with Figure (The Fan) (1921), in the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland and Sunlit Room (ca. 1928), which was awarded the Walter L. Clark Prize for the best figure painting exhibited in 1928 at Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, makes clear how these variations on a theme, in which Miller recombined a new light, color, texture and composition, continued to result in fresh, sparkling paintings.