Richard Edward Miller (1875-1943)
The Blue Beads
signed 'Miller' (lower right)
oil on canvas laid down on board
36 x 30 in. (91.4 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted circa 1916.
Footnotes:
Provenance
(possibly) John Frost (1890-1937), Pasadena, California.
Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles.
Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), Los Angeles, by 1951.
Private collection, Los Angeles.
Goldfield Galleries, Los Angeles, by 1979.
Michelman Fine Art, New York, by 1985.
Private collection, Franklin, Michigan, acquired from the above, April 12, 1985.
By descent to the present owners from the above, 2023.

Exhibited
San Jose, California, San Jose Museum of Art, The United States and the Impressionist Era, November 17, 1979-January 9, 1980, n.p., illustrated.
Oakland, California, The Oakland Museum, Impressionism: The California View, Paintings 1890-1930, September 23-November 8, 1981, pp. 48, 102, illustrated, and elsewhere.

Literature
L. Barrymore, C. Ship, We Barrymores, New York, 1951, p. 121.
American Art Review, January-February 1974, vol. 1, no. 2, n.p., illustrated. (as At the Dressing Table)
The Magazine Antiques, May 1985, vol. CXXVII, no. 5, p. 1057, illustrated.
M.L. Kane, A Bright Oasis: The Paintings of Richard E. Miller, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2007, pp. 52, 119, 130, pl. 36, illustrated.
A. Myzelev, J. Potvin, eds., Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, New York, 2010, p. 132.
J. Korch, Spirende Vår, ebook, 2016, illustrated on the front cover.

This lot is accompanied by a letter dated March 11, 2024, from Marie Louise Kane, scholar on the work of Richard Edward Miller and author of the monograph, A Bright Oasis: The Paintings of Richard E. Miller. We wish to thank Marie Louise Kane for providing the following essay.

Having left France late in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I, Miller returned to his hometown of St. Louis. He returned as a well-known, successful artist of international acclaim. His paintings had won prizes at important exhibitions, he was written up in art journals, he was sought after as a teacher, and his work sold steadily-especially his colorful, sensually executed paintings of solitary women musing at their dressing tables, bathed in soft, sparkling light.

Miller, thinking his return home would be temporary, nevertheless took portrait commissions, served on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition's Advisory Committee for Europe (in which he also exhibited in 1915, receiving a Medal of Honor), and solidified his professional status by being elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design. However, he realized in the spring of 1916 that a return to France was not in the near offing. Feeling dislocated, Miller accepted an offer to teach at the recently founded Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena, California, where his old friend and colleague Guy Rose had been teaching since 1915.

Southern California was ripe for Miller's arrival. Expected to bring the latest French art trends to the West Coast, he was warmly received. Art journalist Mabel Urmy Seares wrote that Miller 's presence there 'has been a great inspiration to a group of local painters,' eager to capture their sunny climate. [The American Magazine of Art, December 1917, p. 63] One of his patrons in Pasadena was Mrs. Adelbert Fenyes, in whose garden Miller painted several pictures, as well as continuing his popular subject of comely women in interiors. However, in Pasadena he altered these compositions by positioning the seated figure much closer to the picture plane than in his earlier works, to stronger effect. The Blue Beads exemplifies this change.

It is often the case that furnishings and still-life elements in Miller paintings help to identify where and when they were painted. As in other Pasadena paintings, such as The Oval Mirror (Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, FL), and Day Dream (sold Christie's, NY, Dec. 2, 2009, Lot 89), a blue and white porcelain vase appears, as does an off-the-shoulder, pale orange silk kimono, as well as rattan chair. These objects do not appear in Miller's French, or later Provincetown paintings. His California paintings also feature a green-tinged blind, somewhat like those in his French paintings, although now of more thinly slatted bamboo, as in The Blue Beads.

In early 1917 Miller exhibited some of his California paintings at the Macbeth Galleries in New York. A reviewer, writing of the exhibition in the New York Times, praised Miller's work and extoled his use of stronger color and textured surface, which he felt allowed the paintings to breathe. [March 4, 1917, Section 5, p. 12]. Macbeth wrote Miller that he was happy with these canvases.

Miller stayed only nine months in California. Although he had been well received and supported-finding congenial colleagues, joining the newly founded Modern Art Society and exhibiting with and jurying for the California Art Club - it was said that he never found his ideal studio there. He also complained, in letters to Macbeth, that he had difficulty obtaining paint (probably a result of the war) and at one point was grinding his own. Miller was purported to have remarked before leaving,' It is suicide for a painter to stay on this coast for more than one year at a time.' [California Arts and Architecture, November 1930, p. 15] It may be that after the heady years in France he felt too far removed from any vibrant art center. And so, in 1917, he went East with his family, settling in the still-forming art colony of Provincetown, MA, 'for the reason that it brings him a little nearer to France.' [American Art News, August 18, 1917, p. 3.]