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Richard Edward Miller
American, 1875-1943
Mimi (Woman in a Green Dress)
Signed Miller (lr)
Oil on canvas
39 1/2 x 32 inches

Standing in a verdant summer garden just beyond a French door, a beautiful young woman quietly regards an interior with a table and birdcage. Composed in a symphony of purples and greens, Miller's signature colors, the charming scene perfectly illustrates the artist's statement that "art's mission is not literary, the telling of a story, but decorative, the conveying of a pleasant optical sensation." [Richard Zellman, ed. American Art Analog, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986, p. 764]

Armed with a scholarship, Richard Edward Miller arrived in Paris in 1898 to study at the Academie Julian with Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. By 1901 he was teaching at a rival school, the Academie Colarossi, and employing a muted tonal palette to paint attractive women in luxurious surroundings. A friend and contemporary of the American Frederick Frieseke, who began spending summers in Giverny in 1906, Miller appears to have started summering in the artists' colony soon after. Associating with his friend, and compatriots Guy Rose and Lawton Parker, Miller turned to the vibrant, light-infused palette exemplified by the present work. In December 1910, the four exhibited together in New York at the Madison Gallery, and were subsequently identified in the press as the "Giverny Group." In his exhibition review, the noted critic James Huneker described Miller's interiors as "cool and graceful," his women "delicate and mysterious," qualities evident in this dazzling painting. Although undated, Mimi (Woman in a Green Dress) is entirely consistent in size, format and palette with Miller's paintings from Giverny.

In 1914, concerned about the hazards of war, Miller left the artists' colony, first returning to his native St. Louis. He moved to Pasadena in 1916 to teach at the Stickney School, where Guy Rose had assumed the post of director two years earlier.

This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity from Marie-Louise Kane.