PETER MILLER (NATURE GODDESS)
AND THE TURTLE
Bill Richards
Energy generated by unseen forces, creatures, and inanimate objects not only fascinated the female Surrealist Peter Miller, but in a real sense, formed or informed the content of all her art: paintings, sculptures, reliefs, and constructions. Born privileged in Hanover, PA, Henrietta Myers (1913-1996) assumed the name Peter in the nineteen-thirties so she would be taken seriously as an artist. Her aspiration came true-after studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, marrying fellow student Earle Miller, and ongoing studies with Arthur Carles-her work was exhibited at the prominent Surrealist Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in the mid-nineteen-forties. However, it wasn’t her education that directed Peter toward Surrealism, since like most artists, she was essentially autodidactic. Her goals were not to seek fame and fortune; instead, she wanted to be involved in the dialog of Surrealism. It is a dialog she would continue for the next fifty years while exhibiting nationally in solo and group exhibitions, always by invitation since she didn’t feel it was appropriate to promote her own work.
Young ladies of Peter’s social milieu were supposed to follow a more conventional path-God forbid becoming an artist and assuming a male name! But Peter was individualistic: intrinsic to her mental and emotional makeup was being an artist and being an artist who felt an inseparable relationship between her mystical art and nature. For her, painting a bird was like an act of nature, while finding a perfect stone was an artistic accomplishment. The interchangeability of art and nature provided her with an easily attainable high, a heightened sense with the fascination of being. The framework for her vision was formed early on and, of course, it precluded her from ever becoming an urban person.
As a visionary, she sought to develop spiritual energy and essence in her art via a luminous merging of motif and method. Motifs conducive to her needs included archaic images, Amish designs, Pueblo petroglyphs, geometry, artists including Miro, Klee, Picasso, Kandinsky and a full spectrum of wild creatures, including her beloved turtle which was her totem. A totem is an embodiment of certain characteristics which may protect or guide one throughout life’s journey. There is no way to know for certain whether Peter selected the turtle herself or whether it was bestowed on her by the Tewa-speaking Pueblo Indians. My guess is that it was divined for her by a Tewa Shaman. She and Earle, a printmaker and sculptor, acquired more than five-thousand acres of land in New Mexico outside of Santa Fe adjoining the San Ildefonso Reservation. There they ensued a life-long relationship with the Pueblos, cherished for its depth of knowledge and friendship, including the adoption of Tilano (a Pueblo) and his partner Edith Warner (a Southwest writer originally from Philadelphia) as godparents and mentors. The Pueblo experience was consummated with a return of the land to the Native Americans upon Peter’s death.
Peter straddled her life among the Native Americans with living at their Rock Raymond Farm in Chester County, PA. One can imagine her New Mexico experience represented by the mythical and mystical inherent in the Pueblo culture, bathed in arid light and earth-colored tonalities. Her Pennsylvania time could be conceived more as a product of Western culture and Surrealist inclinations set in the lush green meadows of Rock Raymond Farm with its beautiful spring-fed swimming pool. These extraordinary living situations required a process of assimilation, a blending and meshing together of knowledge, nature, and influences to form the characteristics of her art.
Intrinsically animistic, believing all natural things animate and inanimate have a soul, a respect-instilling trait, corresponded to her Surrealist predilection for the unseen. She knew it was real – that nature is alive. She also knew that
as a female artist she could masterfully express it. Upon meeting Peter, one was charmed by her intelligence, sensuosity, sense of humor, and her life-affirming manner. For her, living and painting were aspects of the same whole and were mutually dependent.
Two solo exhibitions at the Surrealist Julien Levy Gallery, accompanied by a catalog essay by the art critic and art historian Robert Goldwater, established Peter as an accomplished artist. Her utilization of mythic sources in flattened spaces to narrate the contemporary human psyche was appropriate for the Levy Gallery. She knew most of the prominent Surrealists of that period, many of whom exhibited there. Her friend Max Ernest had a collection of Kachina Dolls, a Pueblo culture creation. A great admirer of Miró, she purchased his important transitional painting, Horse, Pipe, and Red Flower, which she later gave to the Philadelphia Museum.
Surrealism reinforced by Jungian psychology complimented Peter’s psyche with its emphasis on archetypes, dreams, and the subconscious, along with the growing understanding in Western science that space is alive with yet undiscovered energies unperceivable by common sensory perception. Buddhism and the new physics, two interests, would confirm her realization of the interconnectedness of all things and the empowerment of thought.
Her spiritual world was most intense when Peter was in her studio painting, giving shape to her inner-most thoughts and emotions as intuitively as possible, while at the same time, like the turtle, proceeding with observant deliberation. Unlike, say, the neutrality of cubist subject matter, her subjects were inherently loaded with meanings and associations related to the immanent energy in nature and regeneration of life.
The following anecdote relates to Peter’s paintings. In the mid-seventies a mechanic visited my studio and while looking at my paintings stated, “these paintings are ‘blesh’,” referring to the translucent abstract forms which tended to fold space over into itself. He explained that in his trade different components were combined by either blending or meshing. He and other mechanics observed that there was an additional unnamed method which was somewhat a combination of the two – they combined the two words to define the ultimate method, ‘blesh’. Peter loved this story.
A few years later while visiting her studio again, climbing the short hillside steps which Peter always described as her “favorite walk,” I encountered what today would be called an ‘installation’. The studio was brimming with stacks of paintings, memorabilia, stones, quotes attached to walls, constructions, a table surface functioning as a palette encrusted with years of oil-paint buildup buzzing like a Milton Resnick with the resonating smell of linseed oil, and several new stained paintings. I exclaimed about her new stained works, “these are ‘blesh’ paintings” – all the ingredients in the blender had combined to form a “delicious,” to use one of Peter’s favorite words, new outcome. They were radiant and powerful. These blesh paintings in no way negate her previous blended or meshed paintings of earlier periods, but represent, at least for me, the culmination of artistic knowledge and attitudes which led to this point. These blesh paintings, i.e., Turtle Totem, Snail with Umbrella, Chrysallis, Large Tortoise, etc., are stained and rubbed, creating a pulsating sense of light and luminous color. There is a convincing integration of symbolic imagery and surface titillation and a convergence of her natural instincts with multi-faceted cultural influences that uniquely says “Peter Miller.”
Using a higher key palette with the inclusion of both phthalo blue and green, she developed bright throbbing surfaces of subtle energy. With a vast array of personal imagery, often superimposed on the energy field, she developed striking paintings such as the wonderful painting Large Tortoise (Private Collection). In this and all her paintings, the recognizability of form associatively and energetically conveys esoteric meaning as spiritual communication between the painting and viewer. The scale of the turtle is greatly enlarged, totally dominating the see-through landscape. Rather than being painted as a solid, the turtle is transparent, being delineated by a jagged outline - its existence is both separate from and a part of the landscape.
The turtle as a totem means having an affinity with the ancient wisdom of the earth and being naturally tuned into the elements, land, plants, people, and animals. The turtle is walking architecture, always carrying its home and protection, and Pueblos consider it a guide into supernatural realms. It is one of the world’s oldest living creatures with a proclivity for water as well as land, and on its domed shell resides one of nature’s fine abstractions. One might say that Peter’s being and artwork were infused with a ‘turtle wisdom’.
The Alchemist Flask, 1975 Oil on canvas, 50 x 24 ¼ inches
PETER MILLER:
FORGOTTEN WOMAN OF AMERICAN MODERNISM
Peter Miller, born Henrietta Myers (1913–1996), was an American painter who, in the 1940s, had two shows at the prestigious gallery of Julien Levy in New York City, the premier showcase for Surrealism in America (Fig. 1). Yet today she is a forgotten figure in the history of American modernism, due in part to her gender (in order to avoid the sexism of the day, she changed her name to Peter) and to the fact that she was financially independent, meaning that she did not feel the constraint of having to sell her paintings to survive and, therefore, made little effort to promote herself or her work. She was raised in Hanover, Pennsylvania, a small town about one hundred miles west of Philadelphia. Her family owned a large Standardbred horse farm and co-owned a shoe company as well as the town newspaper, The Evening Sun. Henrietta took an interest in art at a very early age and, upon graduation from the Arlington Hall Junior School for Women outside of Washington, D.C., applied for study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. On her application form, she wrote that she wanted to study art because she “would rather paint than do anything else.” She even went so far as to state: “I would rather fail at painting than succeed at anything else” (Fig. 2). Miller lived by these words and remained a dedicated painter throughout her life.1
While at the Academy, Myers studied under the American Impressionist Daniel Garber and, privately, with the Philadelphia modernist Arthur B. Carles, a former teacher at the Academy who gave lessons in his studio. She benefited greatly from his critiques. “When he made a meaningful comment,” she recalled years later, “a student might ask him why he had not said it earlier. ‘You weren’t ready to hear it,’ he would reply.” He told one student “white is a color, not a light,” which, she said, “restructured the student’s whole approach and attitude.”2 It was probably even before studying at the Academy that she painted her first and only Self Portrait (see page 2), the dark outlines and divisions of color suggesting sources in Post-Impressionism, whereas the unmistakable confidence displayed by the young woman is an indication of the steadfastness with which she would pursue her chosen profession. During her last year of study she traveled to Europe for the first time. She spent the winter months in Italy, “looking at pictures,” she later explained, “rather than painting,” that is to say, rather than painting pictures of her own.3 It was while at the Academy that Henrietta met her future
Fig. 1. Peter Miller in her studio, ca. 1945, gelatin silver print, 9 ⅞ x 7 ⅞ inches (Julien Levy Gallery Records, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives).
Francis M. Naumann
husband, C. Earle Miller, who was studying sculpture and printmaking. Upon the conclusion of their studies, Miller and Myers traveled to New Mexico, where Henrietta had vacationed with her family as a child. They both fell in love with the terrain and, in having established a close relationship with the Native American population there, considered it their spiritual home for the remaining years of their lives.
It was probably while still a student at the Academy that Henrietta changed her name to Peter, for she felt that when her work was shown, collectors and critics would take her paintings more seriously if she were identified as male (and she reportedly chose the name Peter because she liked the idea that it was derived from the Greek word for “rock” or “stone”). The first public showing of her pictures under this new name was in a group show at the Santa Fe Museum (today called the New Mexico Museum of Art), where, as one reviewer observed, pastels that she exhibited resembled work by “the French artist Marie Laurencin.” That same critic stated that they were “attractive for their individuality, and the suggestive quality of their delineation, especially the portraits.”4
Unfortunately, none of these pastels survive, but it might have been through these early exhibitions in Santa Fe that Peter Myers and Earle Miller met and befriended the writer Edith Warner, a person who would remain one of their closest, lifelong friends. They were introduced to her by Margretta Dietrich, a famed suffragette who spent much of her
2. Henrietta Myers, Application form for study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , September 15, 1933. Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Archives, Philadelphia.
Fig.
time in these years advocating for the rights of the Indigenous American people of New Mexico. Both Warner and Dietrich were originally from Philadelphia, but both moved to Santa Fe in the 1920s. Warner lived in a house near the Otowi Bridge that crosses the Rio Grande about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. There she ran a tearoom and restaurant that would later become a famous meeting place for scientists associated with the Manhattan Project in nearby Los Alamos. Peter lived with Warner for about two months before being joined by Earle, and it was on her property in the summer of 1935 that Peter and Earle Miller married. A Native American from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, Tilano Montoya, officiated the ceremony, with Warner serving as the only witness, a union that for legal reasons was repeated a few months later at a Christian church in Santa Fe.5 Warner had developed an intimate, lifelong relationship with Montoya, and it was through him that she and the Millers witnessed many performances, ceremonial dances, and spiritual rituals of Native American tribes in the region that would otherwise be closed to visitors outside of the Pueblo community.
Shortly after their marriage, the Millers bought property and built a ranch in Española, about 12 miles north of Warner’s property near the Otowi Bridge (they purchased 85 acres, which allowed them to lease an additional five thousand acres from the Bureau of Land Management). The Millers became especially close to the Tewa people, a branch of the Pueblo who settled along the banks of the Rio Grande River just north of Santa Fe, a region that bordered the location of their ranch. A proud and independent group, with a language that differs from that of their neighbors, the Tewa retain many of the same cultural traditions as the Pueblos: music, craftsmanship, dances, religious beliefs (Fig. 3). For the next fifty years, the Millers would travel between their home in New Mexico and a horse farm they bought in Chester County, Pennsylvania. During their absence from Española, Peter Miller and Edith Warner remained in constant contact through an uninterrupted exchange of letters. Edith was twenty years older than Peter, and since she had no children, she unofficially adopted Peter as her godchild, signing all of her letters “Love, Godmother.”6
In both Pennsylvania and New Mexico, Miller built studios, where at first, it seems, she resisted a direct influence from the Native American culture in which she had come in contact and instead continued to be inspired by the modern European masters whose works she admired as a student, particularly Paul Klee and Joan Miró. She and her husband often traveled to Europe, where-likely through letters of introduction from Carles-they met Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and, most notably for her, Miró himself, the great Spanish Surrealist painter who would have a profound influence on her throughout the 1930s and 1940s.7 Many of her paintings from the 1930s display the lingering influence of Arthur B. Carles, who was himself inspired by some of these same artists—in his case, Braque and Picasso (in 1929 he traveled to Europe, where, in Paris, he met Braque in his studio). Between 1935 and 1940, Carles painted some of the most ambitious and accomplished pictures of his career, many
Fig. 3. Ansel Adams, Drummers at San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1942 Estate of Ansel Adams. Courtesy National Archives, photo no. 79-AAA-2
structurally reliant upon Cubism but with a palette that was as vibrant and intense as the colors of Fauvism (Fig. 4). These same tendencies are evident in paintings by Miller from this period, such as her Portrait of a Woman (Plate 8), where the head of a female figure fills the entire expanse of the canvas, her face delineated by flat fragments of intense color, a single glowing yellow eye staring out at the viewer. Another Head from the same period (Plate 7)—more Picassoid in style—shows the bust of a female figure, her head, shoulders and upper torso dominating the entire expanse of the picture surface, all rendered in a patchwork of intense colors. The same could be said of her Abstract Male Figure (Plate 13), or her Abstract Figure and Tabletop Still Life (Plate 4), which, it could be argued, contain elements that can be traced to paintings by Picasso, Carles, and Miró.
As an abstract painter, Miller could be far more adventurous than her teacher. Some pictures are so void of figuration that only fragments of elements from this world can be discerned, as in Abstraction # 30 (Plate 35), but others painted at around the same time reveal amorphic figures placed within an abstract setting, like the painting called simply Light (Plate 37) or Pink Figures (Plate 37), where, in the latter, a figure appears to be playing a viola. Both Miller and Carles were attracted to the paintings of Miró. They had plenty of opportunities to see his work, not only in Europe, but also in America. He showed regularly at the gallery of Pierre Matisse in New York; was included in Alfred Barr’s Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism at the Museum of Modern
Fig. 4. Arthur B. Carles, Composition No. 6, 1936, oil on canvas, 41 x 51 inches, Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Gift of Joseph Wood Jr., 1957.25
Fig. 5. Joan Miró, Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird, 1926, oil on canvas, 29 x 36 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, © Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2021
Fig. 6. Joan Miró, Still Life with Old Shoes, 1937, oil on canvas, 32 ¼ x 36 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, © Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2021
Fig. 7. Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe, and Red Flower, 1920, oil on canvas, 32 ½ x 29 ½ inches. The Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. C. Earle Miller, 1986, 1986-97-1© Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 2021
Art in 1936; and his first major retrospective was organized by James Johnson Sweeney for the Museum of Modern Art in 1941.8 Through these shows Miller became intimately familiar with Miró’s various styles—from the early Cubist-inspired paintings of the late teens, to the symbol-packed Surrealist landscapes, and to the large paintings of the 1920s, 30s and 40s that contain flat but colorful organic shapes floating against an opaque but ethereal ground, which, at first glance, seem entirely abstract, but which on close inspection never are (Fig. 5).
Miller’s fascination with Miró led her to acquire examples of his work for her own private collection. In the late 1930s, she and her husband purchased his Still Life with Old Shoe, 1937 (Fig. 6) from the Pierre Matisse Gallery. When Carles first saw the painting he said “I feel as if I were in the middle of a hurricane picking up dollar bills.” 9 The Millers said that he was so “high on Miró” that they lent him the painting for some months to keep in his studio as a source of inspiration. A few years later, the Millers would return that painting to the Pierre Matisse Gallery and exchange it for a larger and earlier work by Miró, his Horse, Pipe and Red Flower (Still Life with Horse) (Fig. 7), 1920, but both paintings would continue to exert their influence on Miller’s work for many years to come. The Millers were so enamored of paintings by Miró that they made annual trips to Barcelona (the artist’s hometown), where they attended bullfights and immersed themselves in Catalan culture.
The influence of Miró on Miller’s work in this period is undeniable, a characteristic that was much in evidence when her paintings were shown in two exhibitions at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, the first held in the spring of 1944, followed by a second in the fall of 1945. Several paintings included in these shows looked so much like the work of the Catalan master that they could be visually confused with them, as in the case of her Fantasy Figures in a Landscape (Plate 15), which depicts an amorphic, cartoonlike figure against a blank, monochromatic background, much in the manner of Miró, or an untitled work from the late 1930s (Plate 21) that today is called Head of a Man, but that looks more like a jumble of birds and fish entrapped within a circular fishbowl.
The first show at the Julien Levy Gallery was accompanied by a catalogue listing the titles of the 22 paintings in the exhibition with an introduction by Robert Goldwater (Fig. 8), a professor of art history at Queens College and author of Primitivism in Modern Painting, the first systematic study to trace the influence of primitive cultures on the art of the modern school.10 In his text for Miller’s catalogue, Goldwater not only pointed out the influence of Miró, but he quite accurately also saw a connection between her paintings and the work of Native American
artists, especially sand pictures, which he pointed out are by design temporary, but often charged with meaning that is acutely powerful. “More and more she has merged the two [Miró and Native American art],” he wrote, “has taken the sophisticated shapes and given them a primitive setting.” He thought that Miller’s thin veils of paint evoked the “the distant and absolute qualities of the Indian paintings,” but, at the same time, he warned against taking this comparison too far. “These pictures are not patterns (the denial of space),” he concluded, “but rather bring before us brilliant, symbolic creatures who move fluidly through an unending continuum.”11
After Miller’s first show ended, the artist Louise Bourgeois (who was married to Goldwater, but not yet the internationally acclaimed artist she would become), sent her a press clipping from The Art Digest, wherein the reviewer, a critic named Margaret Breuning, summarized her work as a “translation of fantasy and symbolism.” The critic wondered, however, if that translation could have been possible without the influence of Miró, since, as she says, “so many suggestions of his work are to be felt in most of Miss Miller’s canvases.” Breuning was among the few to point out one of the most striking features of Miller’s paintings from this period, and that is her dramatic use of color. “Color is a particular asset in Miss Miller’s work,” she noted, “accentuating the linear patterns and giving congruity to designs, in a wide chromatic range that varies admirably with the particular theme.”12 Another reviewer of the show compared Miller’s work with that of the Swiss artist Paul Klee, whom, the critic surmised, “is no doubt her favorite.”13 Miller would have seen examples of Klee’s work in various galleries in New York, particularly after the artist’s death
Fig. 8. Peter Miller, Julien Levy Gallery, Opening May 9 [1944], exhibition catalogue, cover, and interior spread and exhibition list.
Fig. 9. Paul Klee, Pastorale (Rythmen), 1927, tempera on canvas, mounted on wood, 27 ¼ x 20 3/8 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and Exchange, © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
in 1940s, when his work was exhibited widely throughout the United States, not only at galleries in New York but also in an exhibition held at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1944 (which featured 97 works).14 Most critics who wrote about Klee in these years echoed the interpretation of his work set forth by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, who organized a retrospective exhibition for Klee in 1930. In his introduction to the accompanying catalogue, Barr placed Klee’s paintings within the context of art produced by children, as well as the art of the insane, before comparing it to sources in prehistoric and nonWestern art, “including hieroglyphs, paleolithic bone carvings, Eskimo drawings and Bushmen paintings, the pictographs of the American Indian” and “masks in theatrical and ethnographic museums.”15
A number of these sources are precisely those upon which Miller drew, so if there are similarities between the work of Miller and Klee, they come from a reliance upon the same visual vocabulary. The reviewer who noted her affinity with the work of Klee went on to say that her Fighting Bull (Plate 85) “contains some of the terrifying force of Picasso in his ‘Guernica’ phase, but this tends to show only how clever Peter Miller is at assimilating the spirit of others.” The critic then returned to her reliance upon Klee, but also expanded her comments to consider the influence of Native American art. “Her somewhat Klee-like ‘Men Birds and Beasts,’ has a much more pleasing ‘dream’ pattern. She uses Indian symbols cleverly, however, making fairly personal use of them.”16 To see the stark similarity between Miller and Klee, we need only compare the Swiss artist’s Pastoral (Rhythms) of 1927 (Fig. 9) to Miller’s Translation of Buckskin and Beadwork of the 1940s (Plate 58), where the same geometric scaffolding dominates the entire format of both pictures.
A critic reviewing the exhibition for Art News saw a clear distinction between Miller’s earlier work and that which followed. “Her early work, with segments of bright color built into weighty and insistent form (such as The Bull), is closer to European styles. . . her later and best products show that she has worked back to absorb and assimilate Indian sand and rock painting.” The critic then writes about the shapes and space within the paintings, a formal reading that takes its lead from the catalogue essay by Goldwater. “The Indian symbols become a kind of vocabulary to be amalgamated with the sophisticated symbol-language of Miró and Klee. Especially salient is the lesson she has learned from Indian painting of relationships of shape to shape in strange, undefined space.” The insightful, though anonymous author of this review then saw within Miller’s work a departure from a reliance upon European and Native American sources, to an art that was uniquely hers, created with her own independent voice. “There is one section [in the exhibition] of Indian subjects. The latest and most interesting group, however, is that concerned with less local and specific matter, where her personal idiom of thought and style heralds a promising future.”17
When the exhibition was nearing its end, Julien Levy wrote a letter to Miller enclosing some press clippings and giving her a report on how the show went. “Attendance has been good,” he reported. “Reaction of the public as varied as that of the critics, certainly encouraging for a first show. I am pleased with the sales, but sorry for your sake that there have been none to strangers and impersonal collectors. However, that is not at all surprising.”18 The results of the show were encouraging enough for Levy to plan another, which took place in the fall of the following year.
Miller’s second show at the Julien Levy Gallery was accompanied by a more modest catalogue, essentially a checklist of the 19 paintings shown (Fig. 10), but this time there was no introduction. Critics of this show saw a clear departure from her earlier reliance upon the work of Klee and Miró. The critic Henry McBride (who was to become a lifelong friend of the Millers), for example, was relieved to find that the influence of these European sources had dissipated. “Peter Miller is now entirely American, and Western American at that,” he wrote, “for she gets her motifs in the Taos region of New Mexico and places them up in a painting language that would not shock the Indians too much and which possibly they would understand better than the white—for there is something of sign-writing in it as well as Indian color.”19 A writer for Art News also noticed a departure in the new work. “Tokens of the change are impulsive drawing, sensuous color, succulent texture, freer design, and an occasional turning from symbolical space toward natural space.”20 Howard Devree writing for The New York Times noticed that Miller was “preoccupied with Indian subject matter and forms of expression,” but also noticed the intense color and intentionally primitive style that she adopted for some of the paintings. “She conveys much of the manner of pictographs in this rather violently colored and explosive work. A deliberate child-like crudity is occasionally called upon as in ‘Animal,’ which could hardly be more specifically titled.”21 Although it is unknown specifically to which
Fig. 10. Peter Miller, Julien Levy Gallery, Opening October 9 [1945], exhibition catalogue, cover and interior spread (exhibition list).
work the critic was referring, because of the way in which it was described, it was likely her Hunters and Mountain Lion (Plate 59), a painting with figures intentionally rendered bluntly and crudely, as if to suggest they had been painted by a child. For Miller, however, we know that the source for these figures was not in children’s art, but rather more likely in petroglyphs, figures etched into the surface of rocks by Native Americans that are found throughout New Mexico. Some, like those found in Prieta—a site located about thirty miles north of the Miller ranch in Española—feature stick figures (Fig. 11) that closely resemble those in Miller’s painting.
Miller rarely signed or dated her paintings, but from the titles listed in the catalogues of her shows at Julien Levy (Figs. 8 and 10) and their description by reviewers, we can identify several that were shown in these exhibitions. Fighting Bull, for example, is either the straightforward depiction of a powerful bull facing the viewer (Plate 84)—or the depiction of a bullfight in progress (Plate 85). In the latter picture, the matador visible at the top of the picture inserts a banderillo (a sharp barbed stick) into the bull’s shoulder, while the horns, feet and tail of the massive thrashing creature are discernable only when separated from the green abstract shapes that dominate the composition, modulations of colors that resemble those in Miró’s Still Life with Shoe (Fig. 6), the painting she and her husband then still owned. In the first of these two paintings— inscribed Toro Bravo on its verso—the bull is shown up close and facing the viewer, but in this case, of course, he faces not the viewer but the matador in the final moments of life. As those familiar with the art of bullfighting know, when the bull lets his tongue hang from its mouth, it is a sign that the battle is over, whereupon the matador pulls out his sword and puts an end to the spectacle. In order to render this tragic moment, Miller resorts to the anatomical distortions and bluntness of Picasso, which she must have thought more appropriate to the subject than the delicacy and sensitivity inherent in paintings by Miró.
Fig. 11. Courtesy of the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project, Mesa Prieta, Velarde, New Mexico
Another major picture shown in her first exhibition at Julien Levy is her Five Ceremonial Dancers (Plate 103). This painting shows five amorphic, Miróesque figures whose bodies are fused with their immediate environment and the distant landscape. Aside from Miró, there are elements in this painting that can be traced to Picasso as well as to the atmospheric and ethereal environments created by Arshile Gorky, who was showing in this same period at the Julien Levy Gallery. Gorky himself borrowed heavily from various European painters, from Cézanne and Picasso (Figs. 12) to Léger and Miró, evident, for example, in his many variations of The Garden in Sochi (Fig. 13). The subject of Five Ceremonial Dancers came from sources in Native American culture, likely from a ritualistic performance she had witnessed on the San Ildefonso Reservation (Fig. 3). Another picture painted at the same time whose title is unknown (today called Three Spirits: Plate 102), was likely envisioned as a pendant to Five Ceremonial Dancers, as the two painting are exactly the same size and a circular shape in the lower-left corner of one seems to intentionally match the same circular shape in the lower-right corner of the other. Despite these elements that bring the two pictures together, it is unknown if their subjects were meant to conjoin, other than to say that Miller might have envisioned all of these figures coalescing within the spatial realm of their environment, just as Native Americans became so much a product of the land on which they lived that their deepest convictions and spiritual beliefs emerged from it.
Fig. 12. Arshile Gorky, Woman with a Palette, 1927, oil on canvas, 53 ½ x 37 ½ inches. The Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds (by exchange) from the bequest of Henrietta Myers Miller and with the proceeds from the sale of other deaccessioned works of art, 2004, 2004-187-1, © 2021 The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Fig. 13. Arshile Gorky, Garden in Sochi, ca. 1940-41, gouache on board, 21 x 27 inches, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchased with bequest of Charles Donald Balcher, © 2021 The Arshile Gorky Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Another painting from the mid-1940s called Devotee (Plate 73) shows a worshipful figure placed below a solar orb paying homage to a superior being that seems to emerge from a rock formation. The surface appears to have been intentionally scratched or rubbed, as if to suggest that the painting itself represents the physical residue of some unknown ritualistic practice. The relationship between Peter Miller’s paintings and her total immersion in the art and culture of Native Americans of the Southwest cannot be underestimated. She would spend much of her remaining years devoted to an exploration of these mysterious signs and symbols, presenting them into an abstract language that, in many cases, only she could decipher and understand.
It was likely through her connection with Julien Levy that Miller was introduced to and befriended a number of other artists who showed at his gallery. She knew and admired the works of Gorky (who had a brief affair with Mercedes Carles, the daughter of Arthur B. Carles), and she
got to know the painter Leon Kelly and his wife, Helen (who was earlier married to the Philadelphia artist and collector Earl Horter, Earle Miller’s former teacher at the Academy). Whereas she expressed admiration for Kelly’s drawings, it is unlikely that she responded positively to his more macabre and dark-toned Surrealist paintings. Through Levy, she also met the artists Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, both of whom also showed at the gallery. They married in 1946 and moved to Sedona, Arizona, where, much like Miller, they came in contact with the Native American population and became enamored of the artifacts they produced (Ernst put together a fairly large collection of Kachina dolls).22 It is not known exactly which paintings by Ernst that Miller saw in these years, but there is no question that she derived some inspiration from their precedence. The compartmentalized, rectangular divisions in his monumental Vox Angelica (Fig. 14), for example—which was shown in the Ernst exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery that immediately preceded hers—is organized in a format that Miller would employ repeatedly throughout the remaining years of her career.23 Unlike Ernst, however, who placed imagery within these rectangular boxes derived from his earlier work, Miller placed spearheads, tridents and other instruments of war (Plate 117), leaves and vessels (Plates 122 and 152), as well as on at least one occasion, examples of Pueblo pottery (Plate 157).
During her time in New Mexico, Miller could not have helped but to become familiar with Native American pottery, which was made famous by one potter in particular, Maria Martinez, who was from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, next to where the Millers lived and very close to the home of Edith Warner. Martinez was famous for having produced a highly refined, thin-walled black-glazed pottery, but more common was
Fig. 14. Max Ernst, Vox Angelica [Flute of Angels], 1943, oil on canvas, 60 x 80 inches (Private Collection).
© 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
the black, white, and brown pottery of the Pueblos, such as those from the Acoma Pueblo, located about sixty miles west of Albuquerque (Fig. 15). These pots and others like them— which to this very day are available for sale in the markets and shops of Santa Fe—are often decorated with abstract geometric patterns, a quality that Miller repeated in the creation of similar artifacts she kept in her studio but executed on a smaller scale and placed within rectangular compartments that resemble those in her paintings (Fig. 16).
There are other paintings by Miller from this period that are comprised entirely of cryptographic symbols set against a monochromatic ground, as if to mime an intentionally indecipherable visual language (Plate 87). Miller’s interest in the symbols and pictorial language practiced by Native Americans was shared by a host of artists in New York at this time who would go on to become the leading abstract painters of the next decade: Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and others. Whereas these artists derived their imagery from examples of primitive art found around the world (African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbian, etc.), Miller’s paintings, as we have seen, can be traced specifically to petroglyphs she had seen near her home in Española (Fig. 11) and to various utilitarian artifacts made by the Pueblos of New Mexico. Quite a few of her pictures feature snakes, turtles, lizards, and birds, animals considered sacred to Native Americans in the Southwest, who believed they could communicate with the gods of
Fig. 15. Pottery from the Acoma Pueblo, Courtesy of The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Collection
Fig. 16. Peter Miller, Untitled, painted wooden objects sent into compartments, date unknown, lost or destroyed (reproduced in C. Earle Miller / Peter Miller, The Schoolhouse, Downingtown, Pennsylvania, exh. cat., September 26-October 3, 1992, fig. 8.
17. Hopi Snake Dance, photographed during Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to Hopiland, Walpi, Arizona, 1913. Photograph National Archives, Washington, D.C.
the underworld through these creatures. In many paintings by Miller, a figure holds a snake in her hands, similar in appearance to the snake goddesses of ancient Minoan civilizations. Serpents are animals used in rituals by the Moquis of Arizona and the Pueblos of New Mexico, who performed famous snake dances, which were prayers for water. These were exciting but sometime dangerous ceremonies to watch, for they were conducted with live rattlesnakes that were either held by hand overhead or in the mouths of the participants (Fig. 17). Miller’s Priestess from the 1940s (Plate 91), features the image of a primitive goddess standing atop a jaguar with serpents in hand, all set within a cloisonné format that resembles the appearance of a stained-glass window, whereas her Snake Priestess from the 1950s (Plate 156) shows a more Aztec-style deity in stone that also holds a snake in each hand, a solar orb hovering in the background.
Miller thought of the creatures rendered in her paintings as much more than the mere depiction of animals, but just as the Native Americans considered them as a means by which to communicate with their deities, she understood their symbolic and spiritual significance. These ideas were likely conveyed to them from the teaching of Tilano Montoya, Edith Warner’s companion, who understood these creatures as metaphors for elements in nature. According to the recollections of Peggy Pound Church, a New Mexican poet and writer who became one of Warner’s closest friends, the lessons were given “to this young couple as private and as personal as love.” “Godfather [Tilano] would often tease us when he heard us talking solemnly,” Peter Miller recalled, “but when he did undertake to teach us or show us something then his manner changed. He was gruff with us and ordered us about impatiently. I wonder now if it might have been some echo of the older men’s attitude in teaching novices in the kiva?” [The kiva is a sacred room in the center of a Pueblo village where rites and religious ceremonies took place.] Church recalled an incident where Warner examined the decorative forms on a vessel created by the Tewa and saw much more in them than mere clouds and animals. “The Plumed Serpent, she began to realize, was no literal reptile, but one of the most ancient metaphors of human thought. Not the river, but the force embodied in the river; not the cloud but the life-giving energies within the cloud—these are what the image of the Plumed Serpent speaks of to the Pueblo people and to all who know that rain is one of the many forms of deity.”24 The serpent was likely a representation of Awanyu, a Tewa deity who was the guardian of their water supply, the protector of waterways, a harbinger of rain, and therefore very highly regarded by the Native Americans of the Southwest who lived in a such a mercilessly hot and arid climate.
Between her two shows at the Levy Gallery, Peter Miller was included in The Women, a show of thirty women artists held at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery on West 57th Street in New York in June of 1945. She was here in the company of many artists who would become notable in the years to come: Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Lee Krasner, Irene Rice Pereira, Kay Sage, Charmion Von
Fig.
Wiegand, etc.25 Guggenheim was among the first to single out and champion the work of female artists, which would earn her the right to be claimed as among the first feminists in the art world. Whereas Miller willingly accepted nearly all invitations to include her work in various group shows, she never felt comfortable being singled out from her male colleagues, but as her name-change suggests, she preferred her work to be categorized as among their equals.
With all the time that Peter Miller spent in New Mexico, it is hard to imagine that she was unaware of the Transcendental Painting Group, which was established in Albuquerque in 1938 by the artists Raymond Johnson and Emile Bisttram. As their name suggests and their manifesto stated, they strove “to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light and design, to imaginative realms that are idealist and spiritual.”26 The group consisted of nine artists but was disbanded in 1941 when the war curtailed their activities. Of the artists who were part of this group, the paintings of Emile Bisttram were closest in style to those of Peter Miller, especially those with repetitive forms set in a tight geometric format (Fig. 18). Whereas most of his paintings are completely abstract, Bisttram occasionally organized these same hardedge geometric shapes to render a figure, as in his Kachina in Headdress of 1937 (Fig. 19).
Fig. 18. Emil Bisttram, Transcendental Abstraction, 1937, pastel on paper, 28 x 22 inches (Addison Rowe Gallery, Santa Fe). Courtesy of Addison Rowe Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Fig. 19. Emil Bisttram, Kacina with Headdress, 1937, encaustic on paper, 22 1.2 x 18 inches (D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York).
Another artist Miller must have known from her sojourns in New Mexico was Georgia O’Keeffe, who made her home in Abiquiú, a Pueblo Tewa village that was only about 25 miles from the Millers’ ranch in Española. O’Keeffe, however, was highly independent and had comparatively little interaction with other American artists living in New Mexico at the time. Yet, once you saw her paintings, it was hard to forget the power they conveyed, whether focused tightly on the petals of an open flower (Fig. 20) or on the majestic desert mountains that surrounded her home. A number of paintings by Miller from the 1940s capture some of the same spirit (Plates 80 and 81), but her interpretations are always more delicate and sensitive than anything painted by O’Keeffe. In almost all cases, when Miller depicted things like flowers and plants, she inevitably attempted to capture more than their mere physical appearance, but rather something that conveyed the mystery of their essence and creation—one could say, a more spiritual view of nature.
Although Miller received a fair amount of critical acclaim from her shows in New York, she slowly withdrew from the art scene there, preferring instead to spend more time communing with nature at her homes in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. In 1951, Edith Warner died, followed two years later by Montoya. In 1954, Miller’s father died, causing her to spend more time in Hanover taking care of her aging mother. Driving across country for the Millers became increasingly
strenuous, but even with all of life’s many distractions, Miller managed to continue painting, spending as much time in her studios as she could. Sources in Native American Art and culture persisted, as in Eastward (Plate 128), a painting that features the overhead view of two lizards, a turtle, a striped snake, and two starfish shells lying on a flat, bluebordered blanket. In her first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, Miller included a work called Translation from Buckskin and Beadwork (Fig. 8), demonstrating that her interest in Native American craftsmanship continued to inform her work, as it would for the remaining years of her career.
In the closing years of their lives, the Millers continued to show their work, but in exhibitions at galleries that were more local with a regional focus. She and her husband were given a joint exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1954. Earle remained a figurative artist throughout his career, whether working as a lithographer or sculptor. His subjects ranged from matadors and bullfights to horses and other farm animals (the latter rendered in the style of the American sculptor Elie Nadelman, whose work the Millers collected). In 1969, Peter Miller showed in an exhibition with Mark Tobey organized for the Peale Galleries of the Academy. She must have experienced a certain sense of satisfaction when her alma mater purchased Dragonfly, Snake and Turtle (Plate199) from the exhibition for their permanent collection.27 In a review of this show, a journalist contacted Miller for a comment on her current work, and she responded: “I find myself going back to the same symbols that stirred the ancient rock painters,” she said. “The link with the past seems magical to me . . . to find yourself free in paint to move backward or forward in time is a marvelous excitement.”28 Indeed, many of Miller’s paintings from the 1960s and 1970s display a reliance upon the symbolic content of her earlier work, but they take on a new power and transcendence as they come into their own, slowly but surely establishing their independence from the artists that had been such overpowering influences earlier in her career. The paintings became noticeably larger and more colorful. One called The Alchemist’s Dream (Plate 189) from the 1960s measures 6-by-8 feet (the largest painting she ever made) and contains figures drawn against a background of four vertical patches of color: orange, yellow, blue, and pink. These electrifying tones are ideal to symbolically represent the chemistry that must take place for the alchemist’s dream to come true.
Alchemy is a medieval pseudo-science that, among other things, concerned itself with the transformation of base metals into gold, as well as an attempt to find a universal elixir of life. Interest in alchemy among artists throughout history is a logical outcome of their practice, for they, too, it could be argued, mix common elements together with the goal of transforming them not into what the alchemist’s called “noble metals,” but into something even greater: works of art. Alchemy in the West
Fig. 20. Geogia O’Keeffe, Jimson Weed/ White Flower No. 1, 1932, 48 x 40 inches. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2014.35.
Photography by Edward C. Robinson III. © 2021 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
began in Greco-Roman Egypt, and, in her paintings, Miller would also employ symbols derived from Egyptian art and hieroglyphic writing (Plate 185). In some cases, on horizontal bands that suggest they could be read, she seems to have invented her own symbolic language, but it was in a script that only she could decipher (Plate 158). The subject of alchemy appears again in the The Alchemist’s Flask (Plate 218), where the ancient chemist’s laboratory is represented by the stone or brick building at the base of the picture, but the transformation that takes place within it rises in a vertical column or flask above it. The process of transformation begins at the bottom with a crescent moon, ascends upward through a turtle and then, above that, through an eagle with a serpent in its claw. It ends at the summit with a solar orb. Perhaps what Miller is suggesting here is that no matter how the elements of this world are combined, in the end they all mix to produce a universal elixir of life, represented here by the glowing and life-giving strength of the sun.
The subject of ancient civilizations must have been important to Miller, for a number of her paintings from the 1960s and 1970s illustrate tools and various artifacts that appear to have been unearthed from an archaeological dig (see Plates 185, 192 and 194). One painting from this period contains names inscribed on its surface that provides an indication of the sources she consulted: Kunneguunda / Dagobert IV / HRH (Plate 172). Kunneguunda is a variant spelling of Kunegunda, a legendary Polish princess who lived in a castle and rejected all suitors who were unable to accomplish an impossible task. When one brave knight did, he unexpectedly rejected her, whereupon she became so distraught that she jumped off the castle wall to her death. Dogobert IV was an actual duke of the Eastern Frankish Empire in the First Century AD, who Miller must have associated with the knight who performed the impossible task. At the top of the picture she depicts a crown, in the middle an armored helmet, and at the bottom an orb with cross, the globus cruciger, a Christian symbol of authority used in the Middle Ages. Miller might have intended this symbol to represent the fictional union of a mythical princess with an actual duke, for at the bottom of the picture she inscribes three capital letters, HRH, abbreviations for both His and Her Royal Highness. The globe and helmet are the only two elements in another painting from this period (Plate 197), the globe seemingly drawn on a scroll and hanging on a wall, whereas the helmet is drawn on a sheet of paper or cloth attached to the wall in a trompe l’oeil fashion by tacks or nails. A number of paintings depict the ancient cities where these fictional events took place (Plate 170), others perhaps even the castle of the princess described in these ancient legends (Plate 212).
The exact meaning of many works by Miller from the 1960s and 1970s is a mystery. In these years she befriended the artist Bill Richards, an abstract painter who taught at Moore College of Art and who, with his wife, Charlene, visited Miller often at her farm in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. When he asked her about the meaning of her pictures, she said, “Whatever is there is what just came out.” Innocent though that remark may seem, there is no doubt that Miller continued to rely heavily
upon the symbolism that had informed her earlier work, while pursuing an entirely new path that was uniquely hers. “She liked the idea of fusing old and new,” Richards recalled. “She didn’t want to remain in the past but wanted to bring the past into the present.”29
As she approached the final decades of her life, Miller exhibited her work rarely, yet she continued to maintain a studio and actively painted well into her seventies. She climbed the steps to her studio daily, which she told Richards was “her favorite walk.”30 To those who knew her well, she shared her devotion to an almost mystical spiritualism, yet she remained staunchly individualistic, possessed with a boundless enthusiasm for life and her generosity was seemingly limitless. “One’s first impression of Peter was that she was a strong willed, independent minded, worldly, well-read intellectual with a very pragmatic approach to life,” recalled their neighbor Jeffrey Valocchi. “Earle was domineering, earthy, physically vibrant and free-wheeling. One’s first impression of them together was that they loved each other deeply and unequivocally.”31
In 1986, the Millers gave their beloved Miró painting, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower (Still Life with Horse) (Fig. 7), to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, fortuitously arranging for its transport to the museum hours before their home tragically caught fire and caused considerable damage. Whereas the Miró was miraculously saved, their collection of Calder sculptures was destroyed, as was everything else they collected over the years (Miller’s studio, which was detached from the house, fortunately survived, as did all the paintings it contained).32
Earle Miller died in 1991. And after suffering from the debilitating effects of a car accident that caused a brain injury and left her badly scarred, Peter Miller died at her farm in Pennsylvania in 1996 at the age of 83. The Millers had no children, so upon her death, Peter left her farm and more than 250 acres of land to the Brandywine River Museum and Conservancy and the National Lands Trust (which at the time was valued at $4.35 million) and their ranch and land in New Mexico to the San Ildefonso Pueblo, along with a bequest of funds to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which allowed them to acquire, among other things, Gorky’s Woman with Palette (Fig. 12). She entrusted the paintings in her studio to Bill Richards, and it is to his credit that they were carefully preserved to this day. He helped to organize exhibitions of her work at galleries in Philadelphia and New York, and he wrote the sensitive and insightful tribute to Peter Miller that forms the foreword to this book (see pp. 2-5).
It is hoped that with this publication and through future exhibitions it will be possible to resuscitate an interest in the work of this highly talented and versatile artist, one who, at long last, should be accorded the recognition within the history of American modernism that she never sought, but has long deserved.
Endnotes
1 Her application for study and records of attendance are preserved in the papers of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her application form was reproduced for the first time in Andrea Miller Theisson, Art and the Impossible: Godmothers, Grandmothers & A Greater Vision – A History of Peter Miller, Women Artists, Famous Friends, Creative Spirits and Dreams (privately printed, 2015), p. 7.
2 Quoted from an interview with Peter Miller in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, during the spring of 1969; see Henry G. Gardiner, “Arthur B. Carles: A Critical and Biographical Study,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, vol 64, nos. 302-303 (JanuaryJune 1970), p. 167.
3 Peter Miller to Marian Dunham, undated but based on internal references, probably written in December 1945 (Papers of Julien Levy, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Marian “Maggy” Dunham was Julien Levy’s assistant at his gallery in the mid-1940s; see Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), p. 87. Theisson speculates that Miller traveled to Europe in celebration of her 21st birthday, and notes that she returned from Trieste on the Vulcania in 1934 (Thiesson, Art and the Impossible, p. 16).
4 “At the Art Museum,” El Palacio, vol. XXXIX, nos. 5-6 (July 31-August 7, 1935), p. 32.She is also listed as having shown under
the name Peter Myers in the Southwestern Artists Annual Show in Santa Fe in 1935; see E. Boyd, “Southwestern Artists Annual Show” (condensed from an article in The Santa Fe Mexican), El Palacio, vol. XXIX, nos. 10-12 (September 4, 11, 18, 1935), p. 57.
5 Their marriage is described in Peggy Pound Church, The House at Otowi Bridge: The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1959), p. 58. The fact that the marriage took place in the parsonage of the Episcopal/Methodist Church was reported in “Bride of the Artist in Santa Fe, N.M.,” The Evening Sun [Hanover, Pennsylvania], Aug. 1, 1935, p. 1.
6 Or abbreviated to simply “GM.” A selection of these letters—all, unfortunately, undated—are transcribed and published in Patrick Burns, ed., In the Shadow of Los Alamos: Selected Writings of Edith Warner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), pp. 170-259.
7 This information comes from an interview with Jeffrey Valocchi, a neighbor of the Millers in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and is recorded in Theisson, Art and the Impossible, p. 20. Valocchi recalls that she met “the Matisse brothers,” by which he likely meant Henri Matisse and his son Pierre.
9 Quotations from an interview with the Millers and Barbara A. Wolanin, Philadelphia, July 23, 1976; quoted in Wolanin, Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952): Painting with Color, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, September 23 – November 27, 1983, exh. cat., p. 118. Wolanin reproduces a photograph of the Miró in Carles’s studio, but mistakenly dates the painting to 1927 (rather than 1937).
10 Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Painting (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938).
11 Robert Goldwater, Peter Miller, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, opening May 9, 1944.
12 Margaret Breuning, “Peter Miller Shows Her Art,” The Art Digest, vol 18, no. 17 (June 1, 1944), p. 13. The letter from Louise Bourgeois to Peter Miller is dated June 9, 1944 (Archives of Peter Miller).
8 Miró’s exhibitions, travels to the United States and interaction with American dealers and collectors is fully documented in Barbara Rose, et al, Miró in America, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, exh. cat., April 21 – June 27, 1982.
13 Name and date of publication unknown, but the reviewer mentions the painting Men, Birds and Beasts, which was included in Miller’s first show at Julien Levy, cat. no. 17 (Fig. 8), so the clipping likely dates from May of 1944.
14 “Paul Klee: Paintings, Drawings, Prints,” The Philadelphia Art Alliance, 2nd floor galleries, Philadelphia, March 14-April 9, 1944.
15 Josef Helfenstein, “Anticipating a Great Market: Klee and American Art 19301933,” in Helfenstein and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, eds., Klee in America, exh. cat., The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, October 6, 2006-January 14, 2007 (Osfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2006), p. 142.
16 Same unidentified clipping as that cited in note 13 above.
17 Art News, vol 43, no. 7 (May 15-31, 1944), p. 21. This review was drawn to my attention in the essay on Peter Miller in Beth Gates Warren and Marie Difilippantonio, Julien Levy: The Man; His Gallery; His Legacy (Seattle: Lucia|Marquand, 2022); at the time of this writing, the book was still unpublished, but Difilippantonio was kind enough to share their entry on Peter Miller with me.
18 Julien Levy to Peter Miller, May 22, 1944 (Archives of Peter Miller).
19 Henry McBride, “Other Worlds: Dissatisfied with this One the Artist Thinks up Another,” The Sun, October 13, 1945, p. 9.
20 Art News, vol. 44, no. 13 (October 15-30), pp. 7, 27. I am grateful to Marie Difilippantonio for having drawn this reference to my attention (see note 17 above).
21 Howard Devree, “Among the New Exhibitions,” New York Times, October 14, 1945.
22 For a detailed account of Ernst’s reliance upon sources in Native American Art, see Sigrid Metken, “’Ten Thousand Redskins:’ Max Ernst and the North American Indians,” in Werner Spies, ed., Max Ernst: A Retrospective (Munich: Prestel, 1991), pp. 357-362.
23 Max Ernst, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, April 24-May 8, 1944, paintings listed on the invitation card designed by Ernst, cat. no. 1; for a reproduction, see Surrealism: Two Private Eyes (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1999), vol. I, p. 143.
24 Church, The House at Otowi Bridge (for full ref., see note 5 above), pp. 23 and 58-59.
25 The Women, exhibition catalogue, Art of this Century, New York, June 12-July 7, 1945. The show was preceded by 31 Women Artists, held from January 5-February 6, 1943, in which Miller was not included.
26 Transcendental Painting Group, flyer/ manifesto, 1938; reproduced in facsimile
in Michael Duncan, Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, exh. cat. (New York: DelMonico Books, 2021), pp. 214-215.
27 A price list for this show is preserved in the archives of the PAFA, where this painting is priced at $900 (Peter Miller, Peale Galleries, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, January 30-March 9, 1969).
28 Quoted in Dorothy Grafly, “Painter’s Palettes Unite Antiquity and Space Age,” Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, February 9, 1969.
29 From an email message to the author, August 11, 2021.
30 Much of the personal information contained within this text about Peter Miller comes from conversations with Bill Richards, whose recollections of the artist are presented as the foreword to this book, pp. 2-5).
31 Quoted in Theisson, Art and the Impossible, p. 35.
32 Information relayed to the author in a telephone conversation with Joseph Rishel, Curator Emeritus, Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 2017. The account of the fire is vividly retold in Theisson, Art and the Impossible, p. 37.
Plates
1. The Sidewise Enchantment, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches
Signed and titled $40,000
2. Dove Cote, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 16 ⅛ x 24 inches
Signed and titled $40,000
Exhibited at Francis Naumann Fine Art, NYC, 2016; Signed and titled $30,000
3. Phoebus Apollo, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 22 ¼ inches
4.Abstract Figure and Table Top Still Life, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 29 ⅛ inches SOLD
5. Abstract, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ½ inches
$35,000
6. Head, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches SOLD
7. Head, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches SOLD
8. Portrait of a Woman ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches SOLD
9. Battle Scene, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 40 ⅛ x 30 ⅛ inches Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945 Signed and titled $50,000
10. Life Force, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
11. Dancers, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 ⅛ inches
$35,000
12. Head and Vase, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 25 ¼ x 30 inches
$35,000
13. Abstract Male Figure, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 27 inches SOLD
14. Reclined Nude with Book, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 inches SOLD
15. Fantasy Figures in a Landscape ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 23 ½ x 19 ½ inches
$30,000
16. The Afterlife, ca. 1930’s
Oil on canvas, 16 x 22 inches
$30,000
17. Midsummer Night, October 1939
Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches
Signed, titled, and dated
$25,000
18. Two Figures, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 45 x 30 inches SOLD
19. Dreamer, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
20. Gifts from Heaven, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 16 ⅛ x 24 inches
$30,000
21. Portrait of a Man, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 inches SOLD
22. Magic Stones, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 25 ⅛ x 30 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
23. Deer Dance ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
$45,000
SOLD
25. Solitude, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 25 ⅛ inches
24. The Sibyl’s, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches SOLD
26. King, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 10 inches SOLD
27. Three Goddesses, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Signed $35,000
28. Night Dance, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ¼ inches
Signed and titled $35,000
29.Indian Chief, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 10 x 15 inches
30.January, 1939 Oil on canvas, 18 ¼ x 23 ⅛ inches Signed, titled, and dated $20,000
31. Untitled, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 ⅛ inches
$30,000
$18,000
32. Magic Woman, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 29 ¼ inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
33. Parrot, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 inches
$30,000
34. Untitled, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches
$30,000
35. Abstraction #30, 1937/38 Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches Signed on sretcher
$25,000
37. Light, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 24 ¼ inches
SOLD
36. Pink Figures, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ½ inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
Signed and dated $30,000
38. Winter, 1937/38 Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
39. Ceremony, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
40. Still Life, 1938 Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 ⅛ inches Signed and titled $40,000
41. Awanyu, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches
$35,000
42. Harpie, 1938
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches
Exhibited at Francis Nauman Fine Art, NYC, 2016, Signed and titled $30,000
44. Untitled, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches
$40,000
43. Soaring, 1937/38 Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches SOLD
45. Turtle and Soul, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 inches SOLD
46. Woman, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
47. Inner Space, July, 1938Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
48. Soul Speak, ca. 1930's Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ⅛ inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
50. Singers, ca. 1930’s Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches SOLD
49. January, 1939 Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ⅛ inches Signed and dated $35,000
51. Man Attacked by Birds, 1938/39 Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 inches Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery , NYC, 1945 Signed and titled $45,000
Titled and dated
$30,000
$30,000
52. Moon Wisdom, 1942Oil on canvas, 18 x 22 inches
53. Nature’s Song, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
54.Crescent Moon and Stars, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 16 ⅛ x 17 ⅛ inches SOLD
55.Salutation, 1942 Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches Signed, titled, and dated $20,000
Signed and titled $35,000
Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery , NYC, 1944
$65,000
Signed and titled $30,000
57. Ceremonial Objects, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
56. Archaic Figure, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 24 x 18 ¼ inches
58. Translation of Buckskin and Beadwork, early1940’s Oil on canvas, 40 ½ x 30 ⅛ inches
59. Hunters and Mountain Lion, ca. early1940’s Oil on canvas, 46 ¼ x 30 inches Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945 Signed and titled $65,000
60. Banner, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 24 ¼ x 20 inches
Signed and titled $35,000
62. Blue Shell Goddess, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 ⅛ inches
Signed and titled $25,000
61. Flower Spirit, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 20 ⅛ inches SOLD
64. Communication, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
$30,000
63 Council of Elders, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 inches $35,000
65. Dancers, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches SOLD
66. Flowers, ca. 1940’s, Oil on canvas, 26 x 38 inches SOLD
68. Forest, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 inches $45,000
67. Night Ceremony, ca. 1940’sOil on canvas, 17 ¾ x 24 ½ inches Signed and titled $35,000
69. Organic, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches SOLD
Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945
Signed and titled $25,000
70. Man Thinking of Winter Fields, 1944 Oil on canvas, 12 x 9 ⅛ inches
71. Bird, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 20 ⅛ x 24 ⅛ inches
Signed and titled $35,000
72. Two Harpis, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 22 ¼ x 36 ⅛ inches SOLD
73. Devotee, ca. 1945
Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
74. Courtship, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches SOLD
75. Los Alamos Mesa, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 30 inches
$45,000
76. Four Figures, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
$45,000
77. Mystical Creatures, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 36 inches
$45,000
78. Gemini, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 18 inches
Signed and titled
$35,000
79. Indian Spirit, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
$30,000
80. Seed, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 24 ⅛ x 28 ¼ inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC,
Signed and titled $45,000
83. Family Roots, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches SOLD
82. Head of a Woman, ca. early1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 inches
1944
81. The Sunflower, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 20 ⅛ x 28 inches SOLD
84. Toro Bravo, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches SOLD
85. Fighting Bull, ca. 1940-44 Oil on canvas, 28 x 40 inches
Theodore R. and Barbara B. Aronson, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania PRIVATE COLLECTION
Signed and titled PRIVATE COLLECTION
at Francis Naumann
Signed and titled
86. Medallions, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 ⅛ inches
88. November, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 ⅛ x 24 ¼ inches
$35,000
87. Orange Abstract, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 23 x 27 inches
Exhibited
Fine Art, NYC, 2016 $35,000
89. Ritual, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 ¼ x 31 ⅛ inches $35,000
90. Story of the Hunt, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
91. Priestess, ca. 1940’s,Signed Oil on canvas, 46 ⅛ x 30 ¼ inches
$75,000
92.Seated Figure, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches
Signed and titled $40,000
93.Singer and Altar, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 29 ⅛ x 36 inches
Signed and titled $35,000
94. Sunflower, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 ½ x 12 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
95. The Ancients, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 ½ x 24 ¼ inches $40,000
96. Shedu, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 20 ⅛ inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
97. Turtle Ceremony, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches Signed and titled $45,000
COLLECTION
99. Sphinx and the Serpent, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 36 ⅛ inches
Signed and titled $25,000
98. The Whisperers, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches PRIVATE
100. Symbols, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 46 ⅛ inches Signed on stretcher PRIVATE COLLECTION
101. The Eagle Dancer, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 46 inches Exhibited at Julian Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945; Signed and titled $65,000
102. Three Spirits, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 38 x 50 inches
$125,000
103. Five Ceremonial Dancers, ca. 1940 Oil on canvas, 38 x 50 inches SOLD
104. Shields, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 28 ⅛ x 36 ¼ inches SOLD
105. Shields, ca. 1949 Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches SOLD
106. Shield, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 48 x 20 inches Signed and titled $45,000
108. Spring, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches Signed and titled $35,000
107. Tewa Vessels, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches $35,000
$25,000
110. Tsankawi, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches
$20,000
111. Turtle Petroplyph, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 34 ¼ inches SOLD
109. Turtle, Snake, and Dove, 1940's Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
112. Leaves, ca. 1949
Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
Signed and titled $30,000
113.Two Figures, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches
SOLD
114.Winter Turtles, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
Signed and titled PRIVATE COLLECTION
115. Five, ca. 1940’s
Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches
$40,000
116. Three Tewa Gods, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 11 x 20 ⅛ inches SOLD
117. Untitled, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches
$35,000
118.Winter, 1949 Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 ⅛ inches
$25,000
119.Untitled, ca. late 1940’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 ⅛ inches
$30,000
120. Wedding, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 16 ⅛ inches SOLD
121. Woman with Birds, ca. 1940’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches SOLD
Signed
PRIVATE COLLECTION
122. Feathers and Vessels, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches
125. Ceremonial Bowls, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 18 ¼ x 22 ⅛ inches Signed and titled
$25,000
123.Bandelier, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches
$20,000
124.Abstract Night Scene, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches SOLD
127. Moon Dance, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 24 ¼ x 54 ¼ inches
$40,000
126. Game Board, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches Signed and titled $35,000
128. Eastward, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 34 ⅛ x 46 ¼ inches
$55,000
129. Flight, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches $35,000
130. The New Mexican Journal, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches $50,000
132. Ceremonial Tapestries, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
$20,000
131. Crowned Head, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 35 ¼ x 25 ¼ inches Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945 Signed and titled
$35,000
133. Canyon Wall, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 26 x 28 inches SOLD
134. Spring, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 38 ⅛ x 50 inches
Signed and titled $75,000
136.The Altar, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 18 ⅛ x 22 ⅛ inches Signed and titled $25,000
137. The Journey, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches $30,000
135.The Marriage, ca. 1950s Oil on canvas, 12 x 14 inches, signed PRIVATE COLLECTION
139. Hieroglyphics, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches
$35,000
138. Inner Construction, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 ⅛ inches
$30,000
141. Harvest, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 ⅛ inches
$35,000
140. Untitled, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches
$50,000
titled
titled
142. Hieroglyphics, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 35 x 44 inches
Signed and
PRIVATE COLLECTION
143. Magic Garden, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 35 ⅛ x 45 inches
Signed and
$55,000
SOLD
145.Into the Moon, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 14 ⅛ x 18 ½ inches
146.Four Snakes, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches
$35,000
144. Stars, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches SOLD
148. Prayer Paddles, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 18 ⅛ inches
$35,000
147. Dance Wands, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 24 inches Signed and titled
$35,000
149. Night Dance, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 54 ⅛ x 52 inches Signed and titled $50,000
150. Figure, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 65 x 45 inches SOLD
151.Soul Shine, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 17 ⅛ x 22 ⅛ inches
$20,000
152.Patchwork in Red, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 42 x 54 inches
Signed and titled
$75,000
153. Untitled, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 ⅛ inches
$35,000
154. The Magical Orb, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
$25,000
Exhibited at Francis Naumann Fine Art, NYC, 2016
$30,000
155. House of Stones, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
156. Snake Priestess, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 16 ¼ x 20 inches
157.Pueblo Pottery, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
$25,000
158.Symbols, ca. 1950’s
Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches
PRIVATE COLLECTION
159. Portrait of an Artist, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 9 x 25 ⅛ inches SOLD
160. Spiritual Awakening, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 38 x 50 inches
$65,000
161. The Offerings, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 14 x 17 ⅛ inches Signed and titled $25,000
162. Time, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
$25,000
163. The Sorceress, ca. early 1950’s Oil on canvas, 40 ⅛ x 44 ¼ inches Signed and titled $65,000
SOLD
Signed and titled $75,000
164.Transformation, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches
165.Yellow Flower, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
166. Alter Pieces, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 46 inches
167. Yellow Message, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 50 ½ x 66 ¼ inches Signed and titled $85,000
Oil
Signed and titled PRIVATE COLLECTION
168. Figure, ca. 1950’s
on canvas, 46 ⅛ x 30 ⅛ inches
169. Orbs, ca. 1950’s Oil on canvas, 38 ⅛ x 50 inches
$75,000
170.Head House, ca. 1960’s
Oil on canvas, 18 ⅛ x 22 ¼ inches
Signed and titled
$35,000
171.Citadel, ca. 1960’s
Oil on canvas, 29 ⅛ x 36 ⅛ inches
$45,000
172. Four Birds (Kumegunda), ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 35 x 20 inches Exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery, NYC, 1945; signed and titled $35,000
173.Messenger, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 36 ¼ x 24 ¼ inches
$45,000
174.Orange Abstract, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 31 ¼ x 40 inches
$65,000
175. Architectural Abstract, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 42 ⅛ inches
$75,000
176. Geometric Abstraction, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 20 ¼ x 40 inches
$50,000
177. Bird and Star, ca. 1960’s
Oil on canvas, 66 ¼ x 30 ½ inches
Signed and titled
$75,000
180. Geometric Abstract, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches $45,000
178.Magic Circle, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches SOLD
179.Magic Circle, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches Signed and titled $35,000
$35,000
181.Midnight Dance, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 ⅛ inches
182.Dream catcher, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 28 x 42 inches
$65,000
183. Untitled, 1960’s Oil on Canvas, 36 x 20 inches
Permanent Collection
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Anne d’Harnoncourt and Joe Rishel
$45,000
$30,000
184.Seeds of the Universe, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ½ inches
185.Swords in Orange, ca. 1960's Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ½ inches
186. The Altar, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 40 ¼ inches SOLD
187. Moonlight Wisdom, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 22 ⅛ x 22 ⅛ inches
SOLD
188. Transmission, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 17 x 22 ⅛ inches
$35,000
and titled
189. The Alchemist’s Dream, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
Signed
$175,000
190. Serpent, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 50 ¼ x 66 ¼ inches Signed and titled $150,000
191. Transformation, ca. 1960’s
Oil on canvas, 32 x 38 inches
$50,000
at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1992
$30,000
194. Warrior, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 22 x 17 inches
$20,000
193. Untitled, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 46 x 34 ¼ inches
$55,000
192. Tools, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches Exhibited
Oil on canvas, 16 ¾ x 25 ⅝ inches Signed and titled PRIVATE COLLECTION
196. Triothi
Signedandtitled Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches PRIVATE COLLECTION
197. Spanish Magic, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches $35,000
195 Pueblo, ca. 1960’s
, ca. 1960’s
198. White Blanket, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches Signed $35,000
199. Dragonfly, Snake, and Turtle, 1969 Oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches, PERMANENT COLLECTION
Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Henry D. Gilpin Fund, 1969.14
200. Alchemy, ca. 1960’s Oil on canvas, 48 x 34 inches $60,000
201. The Anniversary Painting (Wedding Gift), 1970 Oil on canvas, 35 x 44 inches Inscribed by artist $65,000
202. Indian Signs, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 42 x 54 inches Signed and titled $75,000
203.Order Slips #2, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 42 ⅛ inches
$50,000
204.Order Slips, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 40 ⅛ x 50 inches Signed and titled $50,000
205. Ancient Fragments, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches
$60,000
207. Cycle of Life, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 34 ⅛ x 46 ½ inches
$75,000
206. Feathers, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 ⅛ inches Signed and titled $60,000
208. Recipe for Magic Elixir, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 60 ⅛ x 44 ¼ inches Signed and titled $100,000
209. Instruments, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 44 x 30 inches Signed and titled $75,000
Signed and titled
210. Moth, Chrysalis, and Scarab, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 49 3/4 x 42 inches
$80,000
211. Labyrinth, ca. 1970’sOil on canvas, 27 x 84 ¼ inches
Signed and titled Exhibited at Olympia Galleries $150,000
The National Academy of Design, 1975, Exhibited at Larcado Gallery Signed and titled $85,000
212. Castle Wall, 1975 Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 66 ¼ inches
213. Soul Shine, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches
$50,000
214. Enchantment, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 28 ⅛ x 22 inches SOLD
215. Spring Turtle, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 45 ¼ x 60 inches Signed and titled $75,000
216. Serpent with Pyramid, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 36 ⅛ x 48 inches
$60,000
217. Three Stringed Lute, ca.1970’s Oil on canvas, 60 ⅛ x 50 ⅛ inches Signed and titled $100,000
Signed PRIVATE COLLECTION
Signed and titled $20,000
Collective Subconscious
PRIVATE COLLECTION
218. The Alchemist Flask, 1975 Oil on canvas, 50 x 24 ¼ inches
, 1930's Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
Deer Hunt, 1930's Oil on canvas, 10 x 12 inches
219. Abstract, ca. 1970’s Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 ¼ inches
$45,000
Hawksnake, ca. 1950's Oil on canvas, 38 1/8 x 50 inches
$100,000
Peter Miller, ca 1940s
Credit: Molly (Myers) and Jack Benedict
CHRONOLOGY
1928 trip to Grand Canyon and New Mexico Ruth Krump, Ethel and C.N. Myers, Peter Miller.
Courtesy of Christa McInturff
Edith Warner and Tilano Montoya, Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
Edith Warner at the House of Otawi Bridge ca 1930s, Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
1913 Born Henrietta Myers in Hanover, Pennsylvania. She was the only daughter of Ethel and Clinton N. Myers, but had an older brother named Robert who was born in 1904. Her father co-owned the Hanover Shoe Company, was vice president of the town newspaper, The Evening Sun, and was part owner of a large Standardbred horse farm. He eventually became chairman of the First National Bank and Trust Company of Hanover. Henrietta and her brother were brought up in privilege, living in what was known locally as the Myers Mansion, a large Greek Revivalstyle home on Baltimore Street in the center of town.
1928-1931 Attends Hanover High School. She was graduated at the head of her class academically. Shows her first interest in becoming an artist.
1931-33 Attends Arlington Hall Junior College for Women, located outside of Washington, D.C.
1933 Studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Daniel Garber. Takes classes with Arthur B. Carles, a former teacher at the Academy who gave private lessons in his studio.
1934 Travels to Europe for the first time, where she spent the winter months in Italy.
1935 Changed her first name to Peter. Showed pastels under the name Peter Myers in an exhibition at the State Art Museum in Santa Fe. In July, Married Earle C. Miller, a fellow student at the Academy, in a private ceremony held on the property of Edith Warner near the Otowi Bridge in New Mexico, followed by a Christian ceremony at a church in Santa Fe on July 31st. The Millers were “adopted” as godchildren by Warner and her companion Tilano Montoya, a Native American from the San Ildefonso Pueblo.
Miller at her ranch in Española, New Mexico, ca. 1940 Courtesy of Molly (Myers) and Jack Benedict
Peter
Earle Miller Raymond Rock Farm Drawing, Courtesy Brandywine River Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
Tilano Montoya and Peter Miller Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
Miller and Tilano Montoya ca 1930s. Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
1935-36 The Millers purchased 85 acres of land in Española, a town located about 25 miles north of Santa Fe along the Rio Grande River (which allowed them to lease an additional 5,000 acres from the Bureau of Land Management). There they built a ranch with corrals and stables for horses. Around this same time, they also purchased Rock Raymond Farm in East Brandywine Township, Chester Country, Pennsylvania, property to which they added additional parcels of land whenever it became available (until they ended up with approximately 250 acres). For the next half century, the Millers would divide their time between their homes and studios in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.
1930-1940 Continues taking classes with Arthur B. Carles, consisting mostly of painting critiques.
1935-1945: She and her husband make frequent trips to Europe. Through letters of introduction from Carles, they meet many well-known modern artists (it is reported that they met Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Juan Miró).
1944 May 9-May 31: Miller’s first show at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York. The show was accompanied by a catalogue listing the titles of the 22 works shown and including an introduction by Robert Goldwater (Fig. 8). Reviews were generally favorable, nearly all of the critics noting her reliance upon Miró and Paul Klee, as well as sources in Native American art.
May 6: The Evening Sun in Hanover publishes an article on its front page to report upon Miller’s show at the Julien Levy Gallery, saying that “she has spent considerable time in the Southwest and her painting reflect that region in subject and atmosphere.”
Peter Miller at her home, ca. 1940, Rock Raymond Farm, East Brandywine Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Molly (Myers) and Jack Benedict
Peter Miller at her home in Española, New Mexico, ca. 1940 Courtesy of Christa McInturff
Rock Raymond Farm
Photo Courtesy of Linda Morrison
Peter
Peter Miller’s studio at Rock Raymond Farm Dowingtown, Pennslvania
Courtesy of Molly (Myers) and Jack Benedict
1945 June 12-July 7: Included in The Women, Art of This Century, a gallery owned and operated by Peggy Guggenheim in New York.
October 9-October 31: Miller’s second show at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York. She showed 19 works whose titles were given in a small catalogue published by the gallery (see Fig. 10). Reviews were again favorable, especially one in The New York Sun from the notable critic Henry McBride (who would remain a lifelong friend of the Millers).
1948 “Peter Miller Paintings” is shown at 418 Modern Art Gallery, Santa Fe, from February 25 to March 20, 1948. Miller shows 14 paintings. A reviewer for The Santa Fe New Mexican reports “The artist has been moved by the beauty of the rock drawings of the primitive Indians of this area, the pictographs and petroglyphs, and she has used this material to express moods and designs which speak a personal language.”
1951 Edith Warner dies of cancer at age 58.
Catalogue for Peter Miller’s show at the Peale Galleries, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, January 30-March 9, 1969 Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Archives, Philadelphia.
1953 Tilano Montoya dies.
1954 March 16-April 4: Peter Miller and Earle Miller show together in their alma mater, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is represented by 35 works, she by 22.
July 23: Peter Miller’s father dies in Hanover, Pennsylvania, at the age of 78.
1959: Peter Miller’s brother Richard dies unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 55.
1969 January 30-March 9: One-person exhibition at Peale House, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Miller shows 33 works, mostly paintings from the 1950s and 1960s. The show is held concurrently with an exhibition of work by Mark Tobey. From the exhibition, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts purchases her Dragonfly, Snake, and Turtle (a painting priced at $900), the first painting by Miller to enter into the collection of an American museum (see Plate 199).
Peter with Horse
Photo Courtesy of Jack and Molly Myers Benedict
The Evening Sun, Hanover, April 30, 1986
1970 The Millers meet Charlene and Bill Richards, who is an artist teaching at the Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. They meet at Perakis, a gallery and custom-frame shop where Charlene is the director.
1975 Shows a painting called Castle Wall (Plate 212) at the 150th National Academy of Design exhibition in New York. She was then represented by the Lacarda Gallery, which was located at 23 East 67th Street in Manhattan.
Peter Miller Paintings, one-person show at Olympia Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1979 Peter Miller’s mother dies in Hanover at the age of 102.
1986 April: During a stay in Hanover, Peter Miller (reverting to the name Henrietta Myers Miller) gives a journalist from the local Evening Sun newspaper a tour of the family home.
Peggy Pond Church dies in Taos, New Mexico, at age 88. She was called “The First Lady of New Mexican poetry.”
Fall: The Millers loan their large Miró painting Horse, Pipe and Red Flower (Still Life with Horse) (Fig. 7) to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for safekeeping while they travel for the winter to their home in New Mexico. The very day of their departure their home catches fire and the contents are destroyed. In the fire, they lost a number of Calder mobiles, several sculptures by Elie Nadelman, a Joseph Cornell box, an exceptionally large library of first-edition books, and select examples of their own work.
The Millers’ Ranchhouse in Española Photo Courtesy of Christa McInturff
Jennifer Kump Bargelt Chapin
Peter’s Best Friend
Photo Courtesy of Christa McInturff
Peggy Pond Church, Earle and Peter Miller at their ranch in Española, ca. 1960s. Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
Peggy Pond Church & Peter Miller, ca. 1960, Courtesy Los Alamos History Museum Archive, Patrick Burns Collection
1991 January: Earle C. Miller dies at age 84. Peter Miller gets into a car accident that leaves her badly scarred on one side of her face and severely debilitated.
1992 September 26-October 3: C. Earle Miller / Peter Miller, shown together again at The Schoolhouse, Downingtown, Pennsylvania. The show is organized by Joanne Yanoff, and a catalogue features an introduction by Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He calls Miller “that rare combination of incurable romantic and classical empiricist.” Earle Miller was represented by 11 works of art (lithographs and sculptures in wood and bronze), and Peter showed 4 paintings (among them, Plates 56, 57, 61 and 192) and one boxed construction (Fig. 16).
1996 October 19: Peter Miller dies at her home in Pennsylvania at the age of 83. She leaves her farm in Downingtown to the Brandywine River Museum and Conservancy, and her ranch and land in New Mexico to the Tewa Pueblo. She also left a bequest of funds to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which, in 2004, allowed them to acquire Arshile Gorky’s Woman with Palette (Fig. 12).
C. Earle and Peter Miller c.a. 1960s
Photo credit Peter Lester
