Lilian May Miller (July 20, 1895 – January 11, 1943) was an American painter, woodblock printmaker and poet born in Tokyo, Japan. In the world of art she marked her place with imagery, while she attended presentations in traditional kimonos, and signed her paintings with a monogram.
She practiced oil painting, watercolor painting, book illustrations, photography, and printing. Trained in Japan in traditional painting styles and techniques, Lilian May Miller created lyrical sketches, ink paintings and woodblock prints representing people and landscapes from Japan and Korea, the countries where she spent most of her life.
Personal life
Early life and education Lilian May Miller was born in Tokyo, Japan, on July 20, 1895.Lilian May Miler. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925; Collection Number: ARC Identifier 583830 / MLR Number A1 534; NARA Series: M1490; Roll #: 363. Her father, Ransford Miller (1867–1932), was an American diplomatKatrina Gulliver. Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender, Feminism and Global Modernity Between the Wars. I.B.Tauris; 15 March 2012. . p. 113. who had worked for the YMCA in Tokyo from 1890 to 1894.John William Leonard; William Frederick Mohr; Frank R. Holmes. Who's who in New York City and State. L.R. Hamersly Company; 1907. p. 936. From 1895 to 1909 he was a legation interpreter.Jack L. Hammersmith, Spoilsmen in a "Flowery Fairyland": The Development of the U.S. Legation in Japan, 1859-1906. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1998. p. 269. In 1894 Ransford Miller married Lilly Murray, who had arrived in Japan in 1888Lilly Murray Miller. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Special Diplomatic Passport Applications, 1916-1925; Collection Number: ARC Identifier 1150702 / MLR Number A1 537; Box #: 4222; Volume #: 6. and taught English. Lilian had a sister named Harriet, who her father called "Hal"; Lilian was called "Jack".Katrina Gulliver. Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender, Feminism and Global Modernity Between the Wars. I.B.Tauris; 15 March 2012. . p. 126.
In 1904, at the suggestion of well known etcher and engraver Helen Hyde (1868–1919), Ransford Miller enrolled nine-year-old Lilian in the atelier of Kanō Tomonobu (1843–1912),Clay Lancaster, The Japanese Influence in America. New York: Walton H. Rawls, 1963. p. 241. who was the 9th generation head of the famous Kanō school in Tōkyō.Bertha Evelyn Jaques. Helen Hyde and Her Work: An Appreciation. Libby Company, printers; 1922. p. 14. Three years later she exhibited her first works. Her distinct gô (art name) that she used as her professional name was Gyokka which means jeweled flower.
When she was in her teens her father became head of the State Department's Far Eastern Department was transferred back to Washington, D.C., and for the first time she left Japan and went to the United States. Miller attended the Central High School in Washington, D.C., and at the age of 14 won first prize for a Washington Post art contest with Early Morning in Old Japan."These are the prize winning pictures in last week's drawing contest." Washington Post. June 5, 1910. p. 5. She went to Vassar College in New York, attended the college during part of the time writer and professor Sophia Chen Zen studied there, and she was a classmate of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. She graduated with honors in 1917.Vassar College. General Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Vassar College. Haight; 1920. p. 208.
Adulthood Then she went to Seoul, Korea in 1918, where her father was now the American Consul General. She was a journalist and secretary at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Miller then lived with her parents in New York and worked at the Consular Service. She was a clerk and confidential secretary at the American embassy in 1920.1920 New York, Consular Service, Military and Naval Forces; Roll: T625_2041; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: Consular Service; Image: 1247. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. For details on the contents of the film numbers, visit the NARA web page. After a brief period at the State Department, she returned to Tokyo in 1920.
She was in financial ruin after the Great Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923, when many of her prints and paintings were destroyed. Miller lived with her parents in Seoul, Korea from 1923 until 1927 or 1928. While in Korea, Miller made prints and recuperated over a long period of time from a serious illness. In 1930 Miller returned to Japan and moved to Kyoto. Her father returned to the U.S. and became head of the Far Eastern Department in the State Department, Washington.Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan, vol. 2 Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. p. 222. He died in 1932 and his remains were buried at Yokohama Foreign Cemetery.Kendall H. Brown; Lilian Miller; Pacific Asia Museum. Between two worlds: the life and art of Lilian Miller. Pacific Asia Museum; 1998. .
In 1935, Miller had surgery for a large cancerous tumor and a hysterectomy. In early 1936, after a political imbroglio in which Japanese radical officers assassinated several leading politicians, Miller and her mother left Japan and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. In the autumn of 1938 she moved to San Francisco and she began to include the massive redwoods and cedars of California in her work. In her personal life she hiked California's San Gabriel Mountains and wandered through Alaska.
She lived a life of contradictions. Miller wore kimonos when she showed her work – which reflected her east Asian upbringing – but also wore men's clothes and called herself "Jack". The kimono represented the Japanese traditional culture in which she was raised, but she didn't follow the strict protocols for developing wood block printing, this was something that made her popular with Americans. Her parents were from the United States, but she lived most of her life in Asia. She is assumed to have been a lesbian and once said that she didn't have the ability to make herself fall in love with a man.Katrina Gulliver. Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender, Feminism and Global Modernity Between the Wars. I.B.Tauris; 15 March 2012. . pp. 3, 116-127.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, she destroyed much of her woodprint works, having felt betrayed by Japan. During the war, Miller worked against the Japanese. She signed on with a Naval counter propaganda branch as a Japanese censor and research analyst. On December 9, 1942, she had surgery to remove a large malignant tumor at a hospital at Stanford University. She died on January 11, 1943, of abdominal cancer in California. Her ashes were buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in San Francisco, California.
Art
Painting After her Vassar graduation, she returned to Japan to study from 1917 to 1918 with Shimada Bokusen. While in Tokyo, Miller received recognition for her ink painting of Queen Min's Gyeongbok Palace pavilion entitled In a Korean Palace Garden in 1920. She received an award at the Japanese Imperial Salon for the work.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Miller evolved to a new style of popular watercolor painting. She made over 100 watercolor paintings, usually working outdoors.
Woodblock printing
Miller made Shin-hanga woodblock prints, a 20th-century version of traditional Ukiyo-e prints, or pictures of the floating world, which were popular beginning in the 1700s. Because they were prints they were readily available and inexpensive artworks. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt created greater interest in Japanese work as an art form in the late 19th century, partly through Edmond's books Outamaro and Hokousai. They first identified the cultural movement of Japonisme. Of the western women who began making shin-hanga wood prints, or "creative prints", Miller was the only one born in the orient. The others, who had all lived in Japan, were Helen Hyde, who first made the Japanese prints in 1901, Elizabeth Keith and Bertha Lum. The shin-hanga prints included scenes from the contemporary world, like western dress and electricity.Katrina Gulliver. Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender, Feminism and Global Modernity Between the Wars. I.B.Tauris; 15 March 2012. . pp. 115-116.
Woodblock print production was traditionally a team effort, led by the artist's direction. Several woodblocks were cut from the artist's sketch and watercolor painting, each woodblock for a specific color. Then a printer would make prints by pressing the woodblock with its associated colored ink onto paper. Miller did the work herself, creating the initial image and woodcuts and making the prints.Katrina Gulliver. Modern Women in China and Japan: Gender, Feminism and Global Modernity Between the Wars. I.B.Tauris; 15 March 2012. . p. 116.
In September 1920 she turned to woodblock printing, creating images of Korean people and countryside, which she sold in Tōkyō and the United States. She was living as the tenant of the artist and promoter Bertha B. Lum (1869–1954). Miller began to work with the block-carver Matsumoto, who had previously worked for Helen Hyde, and the printer Nishimura Kumakichi (1861 – ca. 1941), whom Bertha Lum relied on for her own print productions. Shortly thereafter there was a dramatic falling-out between the two artists. Miller also struggled with a relationship with Elizabeth Keith, who began as a friend but later developed into a rival.Kendall H. Brown. "Lilian Miller, An Artist in Japan" Impressions #28, 2006. From 1920, she made her living as a printmaker. The images, mostly of scenes of Korean life, were sold in Tokyo, Seoul, large American cities, Shanghai, and Peking. Many of Miller's prints were produced on postcards.
On September 1, 1923, Tōkyō was largely destroyed by the Great Kantō earthquake, including most of Miller's paintings and prints. Miller was in Korea from 1923 to 1927. During that time she produced more stylized prints. Miller made prints of domestic scenes, like children at play or women hanging laundry. One of her prints, A Strange Scene in Korea, depicted a woman carrying a baby on her back with a basket over her head. Another is entitled, Korean Farm House under the Moonlight with a man talking to a woman with a basket over her head.
In Rain Blossoms that Miler made in 1928, the colorful umbrellas, or 'blossoms', are contrasted against the plain background of the people's bodies. Willow trees and the bridge are traditional Oriental motifs. It is considered a "beautiful example of Miller's work". Other prints were Nikko Gateway, Makaen Monastery and Festival of Lanterns. Most of her works were scenes of Japan.
Lilian made a six-month visit to the United States in 1929 and 1930 and gave woodblock printing demonstrations at galleries and museums in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and Pasadena. During her lectures, exhibitions and one-woman shows, she wore an elaborate kimono. Miller was admired for her ability to execute the entire woodblock printing process, including the block-cutting stage, by herself. Her works were then in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the British Museum. In the 1937 exhibition of the Honolulu Print Makers, she exhibited a print depicting bamboo using a lithotint method, a kind of lithography, that achieved the effect of ink painting. It was entitled A Spray of Bamboo and won the sixth annual gift print prize.
Female patrons and collectors