The Sun Porch
Framed: 40 1/4 x 38 3/8 inches (102.24 x 97.49 cm)
- 217
The sitter has been identified as Marjorie Ball of Provincetown, Massachusetts.Exhibition History
Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, April 27–June 15, 1922.
Magnificent Gifts for the 75th, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., February 11–April 4, 2010, unnumbered.
Richard Edward Miller’s The Sun Porch shows the influence of French Impressionism. The woman’s surroundings and attire are painted with small dabs and long, loose strokes of paint—characteristic of the Impressionist style. Miller encountered the Impressionists while spending summers in Giverny, France. There he saw and studied Claude Monet’s landscape paintings, like Mill at Limetz (pictured below). Although Miller embraced the Impressionists’ desire to capture a fleeting moment, the female figure in The Sun Porch is strongly modeled, evidence of the ongoing influence of his early training.
to Macbeth Gallery, New York;
to Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1922-26;
John R. Longmire (father of donor), St. Louis, Missouri, about 1930 or later;
to Mary Edith (Mrs. Harry G.) Woodward (niece of the artist), Mission Hills, Kansas;
to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., 2008.
Probably Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Thirty of Thirty Paintings by Thirty Artists, exh. cat. (New York: Macbeth Gallery, 1922), unpaginated.
“Three Pictures from Three Nations,” International Studio 75 (July 1922): 344 (repro.).
Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, exh. cat. (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, 1922).
Richard E. Miller: An Impression and Appreciation (St. Louis: Longmire Fund, 1968), unpaginated.
