Still Life
Another of my favorite paintings in the April 18th & 19th sale is also by a Philadelphia native and student of The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Mildred Bunting Miller (1892-1964).
Born in Philadelphia, Miller studied at the Academy from 1910 through 1915 under Thomas Anshutz, Hugh Breckenridge, Daniel Garber, Robert Vonnoh, and Violet Oakley. A recognized talent, she twice won both the Cresson Travel Scholarship and the Mary Smith prize. Mildred’s vocation was set. She wrote “No one knows better than an art student the difficulty- almost the impossibility- of capturing the fleeting beauty that is life. But the desire to do this becomes almost a religion.” (Brown, p.27)
Mildred Bunting Miller has a special connection to our area. After graduating from PAFA at the age of twenty-three, she married classmate Roy Miller, who was hired to manage PAFA’s new country school program in Historic Yellow Springs. Mildred became resident artist, co-director, and instructor. During the years 1916 to 1934, Miller painted and taught classes in the old ochre-washed Small Barn Studio and the surrounding village, which had been purchased in its entirety by PAFA. The country school became wildly successful and extended to year-round attendance. Students were frequently seen gathered around models both animal and human, or found plein air painting among the mineral springs and farm fields. While Miller’s art flourished and was exhibited in museums and galleries, her marriage to Roy crumbled and his management became erratic. In 1934 the Millers were forced to leave the country school, setting up one of their own nearby; but this school was Roy’s dream, not Mildred’s, and although all of her and their money was sunk into it, Mildred departed to paint commissions and teach elsewhere, from New Jersey to Baltimore. Finally, in 1945, she got on a bus for San Diego alone. In California she settled down, buying a small fruit tree farm and teaching art for state-sponsored programs. She relished her independence and lifestyle. Solitude led to more time for painting and for introspection. She filled many journals, which have been published in book form by her niece Virginia Brown, Mildred Miller Remembered. Her writings reveal that her mind constantly returned to the inequity of the male-dominated art world (and world in general) and her years in Chester Springs. Plagued by self-doubt, Mildred’s moods alternated between the elation of a job well done, and the day-to-day reality of toiling in obscurity and achieving little fame or glory. Regardless of the prizes she had won and the praise her work received, she was not considered to be a great artist during her lifetime. She wrote “But when my body is no longer on earth my paintings will still be hung in people’s homes. They will glance at them as they go about their work. They will not think of me! But there I shall be, what I saw they will still have in their minds,” (Brown, p. 181).
Miller’s strong prismatic colors and broken brushstroke technique identify her as a Pennsylvania Impressionist, specifically, as a student of Daniel Garber. Her paintings have clarity, and a masterful handling of light.
In this still life, the table spreads horizontally from the viewer like landscape, the horizon disappearing over the table’s edge like the curvature of the earth, the distant wall the atmosphere. The plane is tilted toward the viewer, the perspective looks down on the dinner napkin, yet there is almost a side view of the wine bottle in the distance. The composition is strong and balanced, with parallel lines and angles that lead the eye. The forms are defined by variation of color. The napkin is sculptural. Miller’s brushstrokes also show dimension, particularly of the table. One of my favorite things about this still life is the tablecloth, with its vertical and horizontal brushstrokes, the latter shimmering like the flakes in an opal. The surface is fascinating, as is the sense of space.
Mildred Bunting Miller exhibited at the Academy, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Academy of Design, the Phillips Memorial, and many other places. Her works can be found in the collection of the Woodmere Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
By Cynthia Beech Lawrence
–The Woodmere Art Museum
–Brown, Virginia, Mildred Miller Remembered, Xlibris, 2006.
