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Richard Edward Miller (1875-1943). Cafe de Paris. browse these categories for related items... All Items: Fine Art:Paintings:Oil:N. America:American: Pre 1940: item # 894569 Please refer to our stock # 2468C when inquiring.
Raymond Agler Fine Arts 16 Pleasant Street Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930 978-281-5048 Guest Book Price on request |
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| Oil on pressed panel, 10 x 14 inches, 17 x 21 inches framed, signed "Miller", lower right. Although Provincetown is sometimes erroneously cited as Miller's birthplace, he was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. After public school and 4 years study at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, he was employed as a staff artist at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. A scholarship enabled him to go to Paris in 1898 to study at the Academie Julian and subsequently with Gerome, the acknowledged master of the figure. He met his wife, Harriette Adams, during this stay and became part of the group who met at Monet's home in Giverny to paint, critique each others' work and socialize. Miller's first painting at the Paris Salon received a gold medal. At age 35, he was inducted into the Legion d'Honneur and already had paintings in major public collections. As war engulfed the Continent in 1914, he returned to St. Louis and was welcomed by the St. Louis Art League at a reception "fitting to Mrs. Miller's charm and Mr. Miller's attainments." Plans were immediately made for the purchase of Miller's "Reverie" by the St. Louis Art Museum. By 1918 Miller was established in Provincetown, Massachusetts, his home for the rest of his life. The Parisian cafe milieu had been as welcoming and vibrant a part of life for Miller as it had been a decade or so earlier for the French pioneers of Impressionism and their literary compatriots. Miller's first works depicting cafe life date to about 1906, including such large evening scenes as "Cafe de Nuit" and "L'Heure de l'Apertif", mannered, multi-figural works conceptually related to Manet's "Cafe Scene" (pencil sketch, 1878) and "At the Cafe" (lithograph, 1874). A likely earlier, slightly less-finished version of the painting offered here was sold at Sotheby's New York (December 3, 1997, lot #5). The pressed panel support would indicate a post-1925, i.e., Provincetown period, dating for our work. It exhibits Miller's talents at their peak, revisiting his Parisian days with a compositon free of extraneous detail, painted with absolute confidence. | ||
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