Kenneth Hayes Miller

Kenneth Hayes Miller studied at Art Students League of New York. Training under Henry Siddons Mowbray, William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox is recorded. Reginald Marsh and Ruth Reeves are recorded as having studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller. The recorded working language is English. Work by Kenneth Hayes Miller is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Cleveland Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art.

• Name — Kenneth Hayes Miller • Born — 11 March 1876 • Died — 1952 • Education — Art Students League of New York

Born in Oneida, New York, he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Kenyon Cox, Henry Siddons Mowbray and with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art. His early works were influenced by the paintings of his friend Albert Pinkham Ryder, and depict figures in phantasmagorical landscapes. After 1920 Miller became interested in the underpainting-and-glazing techniques of the old masters, which he employed in painting contemporary scenes. He is especially noted for his many paintings of women shopping in department stores. The art historian M. Sue Kendall says: "In their classical poses and formalized compositions, Miller’s shoppers become ovoid and columnar forms in cloche hats and chokers, a study of geometricized volumes in space trying to inhabit a single shallow picture plane." Active as a printmaker throughout his career, Miller created many etchings, some of which reproduce his painted compositions. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Although he used traditional methods and was hostile to artistic modernism, Miller believed that good art is always radical in nature. He was a socialist, and intended his art to have a political dimension. By the time of his death in New York City in 1952, his reputation was in eclipse, but he was rediscovered in the 1970s.

Collections where his works can be found include: • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York • Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York • Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA • Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York • Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia • New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California • Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut • Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada • New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut • Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio • Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, District of Columbia • Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California • Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas • Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, District of Columbia • Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky