Random Inspiration: Richard E. Miller Part III

The training Miller received at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts was excellent. Founded in 1879 as the art department of Washington University, the School of Fine Arts was the oldest and most advanced program of its kind in the nation, offering a rigorous curriculum taught by artists who had all been educated in the academies of Europe. Classes included Drawing, Modeling, Painting, Artistic Anatomy, Perspective, Composition, and Mechanical Drawing.² Additionally, there were options of taking Portrait Painting classes and participating in forty hours per week of life drawing.³ Under this tutelage, Miller flourished, taking multiple prizes for his classwork and winning opportunities to show alongside such contemporary masters as Cassatt, Chase, Whistler, and Monet.

In 1897, Miller began working as an illustrator for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but within a year, he had received a $600 scholarship from the Art Students Association at the School of Fine Arts, and he left Missouri to begin his studies in Paris, the world’s center for art education. He worked his way across the Atlantic on a cattle boat, tending to animals in exchange for his fare,⁴ and by the spring of 1899, he was enrolled in the Académie Julian, a school with a rough-and-tumble reputation,⁵ but whose excellent faculty, inexpensive tuition, and lack of entrance requirements made it popular amongst American students. At Julian, Miller studied under Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens, both of whom also taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and were on the jury of the Salon. Again Miller thrived, and within a year he was attracting attention in France and at home, taking awards at several international exhibits.

Over the next ten years, most of which were spent in France, Miller’s work continued to win awards in competitions throughout Europe and the United States. Though open to changing trends in contemporary art, Miller chose to send paintings to the different exhibits which were more Naturalist in flavor, featuring subdued colors, and compositions which were still conservative enough for most juries. By 1910, however, Miller was coming into his own, deciding on a signature style which mixed his fine draftsmanship with influences from the works of Joaquín Sorolla, the Nabis, the Fauves, the Impressionists, Alfred Stevens, James Tissot, and, of course, James Abbott McNeil Whistler.

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[part 1]

[part 2]