Richard Edward Miller 1875-1943

Private Collection, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Private Collection, New Hope, Pennsylvania, circa 1970 (acquired from the above; sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 22, 2002, lot 40, illustrated)
Richard Green Fine Paintings, London, England (acquired from the above sale)
Private Collection (acquired from the above)

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. Under UV: There are a few pindots of inpainting in the figure's right arm and face, as well as some minor dots in the background.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Marie Louise Kane writes in a letter regarding the present work, "By the time Miller painted this canvas, probably in the mid-1920s, he was well established as one of the artistic luminaries, indeed one of the first wave of artists, who had turned Provincetown, Massachusetts into a leading art colony on the East coast. In the fifteen years he had previously spent in France, first as a student, then as a teacher and acclaimed exhibition artist, followed by a year in Pasadena, California, Miller espoused the conviction that 'Art's mission is not literary, the telling of a story, but decorative, the conveying of a pleasant optical sensation,' a belief he held to the end of his career.

"The subject that exemplified this conviction for most of Miller's forty-year career was that of comely women posed in meditative solitude, usually in domestic interiors. Woman Seated at a Dressing Table fits squarely into this genre, which Miller raised to new popularity. The boldly checked taffeta skirt in the painting echoes one of Miller's early successes in the genre—Chinese Statuette, ca. 1909-1910 (The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri), a Sargentesque portrait of his wife clad in the same skirt (rendered slightly darker). The repeated use of this skirt, which appears in several other paintings over a span of twenty years, indicates that it was a prop, a deliberate costume, that served Miller's desire to create decorative effects while simultaneously showcasing his ability to render complex forms and textures. Any one of the skirt's characteristics—billowing folds, shimmering texture, and checked weave—is a technical painting challenge. By combining them Miller displayed the kind of mastery that earned him the French Legion of Honor medal for his art in 1908.

"Between the time he painted Chinese Statuette and Woman Seated at a Dressing Table, Miller went through a very strong impressionist period, in which his palette became very bright and colorful...In the early 1920s he reverted more to the grayer tones, cooler colors and fluid medium of his early paintings. He also began painting nudes again, honing his already well-developed skill at turning flesh into an infinitely nuanced and exquisite substance. Woman Seated at Dressing Table marks both of these tendencies."