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The Life and Work of Godfrey Clive Miller, 1893 - 1964

PhD thesis by Ann Wookey

Chapter 1. The years of innocence and early manhood: New Zealand and Australia, 1893 - 1929

notes

1. 1.Letter from Miller to Roger James, London, 2 January 1938, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 13, pp 5, 6.
   

2. 2.New Zealand Births Register, Folio 3775, Sydney, State Library of New South Wales. This birth date confirmation invalidates the August 1895 date recorded by Miller for his 1929 London Slade School of Fine Arts enrolment; University College London Records, University College London, London.
   

3. 3.I am indebted to the ANZ Banking Group [New Zealand] Ltd Archives for the information about Thomas Tripney Miller’s career; letter from ANZ Banking Group [New Zealand] Ltd Archives to Ann Wookey, Wellington, 21 December 1987, author’s collection; see also Appendix 2, entry for Thomas Tripney Miller.
   

4. 4.La Trobe University Record, vol 24, no 1, Autumn 1990, p 10.
   

5. 5.Letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, undated, Godfrey Clive Miller, Letters to Lewis Miller, ca 1945-1960 and Madeleine Webb, ca 1956-1964 [referred to hereafter as Miller Papers II], quotations reproduced with permission from the AMP Trustee Company, Sydney, Mitchell Library, ML MSS 2719 [material not fully catalogued], vol 1, sequence no 43. As an instance of Miller’s thoughts about mountains, see letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, London, 9 January 1938, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 8, pp 279, 281.
   

6. 6.Family information from Miller’s niece Isobel Long, to whom I am grateful; Isabel Long talking of her uncle, Godfrey Miller, Melbourne, 21 February 1988, interview with Ann Wookey, and letter from Isabel Long to Ann Wookey, Melbourne, 6 July 1988, both author’s collection; see also Appendix 2, entries for John Duthie, Miller family members and John Duthie and Co, Limited, New Zealand.
   

7. 7.Letter from Godfrey Miller to the Tate Gallery, Sydney, 6 February 1962; Godfrey Clive Miller, File, London, The Tate Gallery Archives. Another possibility for Miller’s early schooling [although less probable] was in Wellington and the Hutt Valley under his grandfather’s guardianship as happened with his sister Mera. On his brother Malcolm’s schooling, see Frank A Simpson, ed, Who’s Who in New Zealand, Wellington, A H & A W Reed, 1956, p 161 [‘Malcolm Miller’].
   

8. 8.Miller’s acquisitions as a youth of reproductions from the Liber Studorium and his mother’s painting were recorded with the Tate Gallery; Miller, File, The Tate Gallery Archives, op cit. For the sources about Miller’s secondary schooling, see Appendix 2, entry for the Otago Boys’ High School, also this chapter, fn 41, and Appendix 2, entry for the Otago School of Art and Design.
   

9. 9.Report and Prospectus for 1911-1912 of the Dunedin Technical School, Dunedin, 1912, pp 46-48, 75, 76. No further record of Godfrey Clive Miller is found in the Technical School prospectuses or student rolls between 1910 and 1917 [the year prior to his departure for Australia]. However, an Otago Education Board Art School fees and rollbook shows that he owed fees for the quarters of 19 May and 24 August 1912; letter from the Hocken Library, University of Otago, to Ann Wookey, Dunedin, 5 February 1988, author’s collection. Miller stated that he started ‘tech night classes’ when 17; letter from Miller to Alan McCulloch, Sydney, 21 October 1962, Miller Papers IV, op cit.
   

10. 10.Letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, 1 February 1962, Miller Papers II, op cit, vol 3, sequence no 100.
    

11. 11.Letter from Miller to Alan McCulloch, Sydney, 8 May 1954, Miller Papers IV, op cit.
    

12. 12.Henshaw, Godfrey Miller [1965], op cit.
    

13. 13.Letter from the New Zealand Ministry of Defence [John Crawford for Secretary of Defence] to Ann Wookey, Wellington, 11 November 1987, author’s collection [reproduced in Appendix 1]. Apprenticeship confirmed by Miller’s 1917 New Zealand Institute of Architects registration, see this chapter, fn 37. Moreover, in 1962 Miller informed the Tate Gallery that he had been articled to a firm of architects and served an apprenticeship, worked as a carpenter on large buildings and become an Associate Member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects; Miller, File, The Tate Gallery Archives, op cit.
    

14. 14.Letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 1 June 1923, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 7, p 13. Miller’s architect ‘master’ could have moved from Salmond and Vanes to Mason & Wales, his employer of some years later; see this chapter, fn 38.
    

15. 15.New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

16. 16.T J Arnold, ‘History’, in J O Lucas, G H Fairmaid, M G McInnes and W J Patrick, comps and eds, Otago Boys’ High School Old Boys’ Register, Centennial publication, Dunedin, 1963, p 21.
    

17. 17.Mrs Lyla Melles [née Bryden], Auckland, quoted in Keavney, ‘Godfrey Miller’s lost love’ [1967], op cit, p 2. Miller’s full physical description then is found on his army service record; see fn to letter from the New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

18. 18.Henshaw, Godfrey Miller [1965], op cit. Henshaw’s picture of Miller is supported by the artist’s recalling late in life for Bryan Robertson that he returned from the war in 1916 ‘on to my youthful studies of literature poetry architecture’; letter from Miller to Bryan Robertson [Director, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London], Sydney, 5 May 1961, Correspondence with Bryan Robertson, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery Archives [referred to hereafter as Miller Papers IX]. Osborne notes also his reading of these three authors in his youth; Osborne [1981], op cit, pp 373, 374. Thompson, who was a mystic late nineteenth century English poet, remained a favourite writer throughout Miller’s life; see also Miller’s pamphlet [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

19. 19.Miller, File, The Tate Gallery Archives, op cit.
    

20. 20.Catalogue, Dunedin, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 1913, with assistance from Allgemeines Lexikonder der Bildenden Künstler, Leipzig, E A Seemann, 1913, and Una Platts, Nineteenth Century New Zealand Artists, Christchurch, Avon Fine Prints Limited, 1980. By 1913 sixty one oils, fifty watercolours, a miniature, an etching and three mezzo-tint engravings could be displayed  Local artist acquisitions presumably came from the annual Otago Art Society exhibitions.
    

21. 21.Peter Entwisle, William Mathew Hodgkins & his Circle, exhibition catalogue, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, 1984, p 16.
    

22. 22.Peter McIntyre, The Painted Years, Wellington, A H & A W Reed, 1962, pp 11-26.
    

23. 23.Letter from Miller to Theni Miller, London, 4 October 1935, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 11, p 166.
    

24. 24.New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit. [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

25. 25.Christopher Pugsley, Gallipoli: the New Zealand Story, Auckland, Hodder and Stoughton, 1984, pp 70-74 and Appendix II, ‘A Gallipoli Chronology’, entry for 4 December 1914, p 357.
    

26. 26.J Gwyn Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and his Cult, Leidin, E J Brill, 1980, p 18.
    

27. 27.Dundas records that the monuments and “mystery” of Egypt experienced by Miller then ‘made an indelible impression on him’; Dundas [1975], op cit, p 5.
    

28. 28.New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

29. 29.The total New Zealand wounded alone for August was 2250. Graphic descriptions of the condition of the troops at Gallipoli prior to these engagements and of the battlefields during them are found in Pugsley; Pugsley [1984], op cit. pp 272-274, and ‘Appendix III:  New Zealand statistics’, p 360.
    

30. 30.New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit [reproduced in Appendix 1].
    

31. 31.Disturbances like noise also disrupted Miller’s life pattern and attention span. The injury Miller sustained was recorded by the army as ‘G.S.W. F.R. Humeris. Musclo-Spiral Paralysis’. A more recent medical opinion identified him to have been left with musculospiral nerve palsy, a condition that was likely to have had long-term physical effects; letter from Professor John Ludbrook to Ann Wookey, Melbourne, 2 August 1992, author’s collection [reproduced in Appendix 1].  Enquiries to the Australian Commonwealth Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the Commonwealth Archives have failed to uncover further information from Miller’s records despite quoting his file number M107263[T11]; letter from the NSW Department of Repatriation to Godfrey Miller, Sydney, 24 July 1963, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 14, p 66. A New Zealand Chief of Defence Force spokesman has written that he has ‘been unable to find anything on Miller’s army personal file that suggests he suffered from shell shock’; letter and army record photocopies from New Zealand Defence Force [J A B Crawford for Chief of Defence Force] to Ann Wookey, Wellington, 30 June 1992 [included army record photocopies], author’s collection. Unfortunately, it appears that his war pension file has been lost or destroyed’ [this lost or destroyed file is that held by the Australian authorities]; see also this chapter, fn 51.
    

32. 32.The Times History of the War, London, The Times Newspaper, 1916, vol VII, pp 315, 316.
    

33. 33.The English artist George Sweet believes Miller to suffer neurasthenia - Sweet had a family member of his own with the same condition, and so was well placed to recognise it in others; conversations with George Sweet, Bristol, 28 and 29 January 1992, notes held, author’s collection.
    

34. 34.Cited in Keavney, ‘Godfrey Miller’s lost love’ [1967], op cit [brackets my addition].
    

35. 35.Unfortunately for war veterans of those days, appropriate treatment for shell-shock was not available immediately post World War I. It took almost twenty years, into the mid-1930s, for the advances made there by the Gestalt School of Psychology in Germany to reach England and thus become available to the many sufferers throughout the British Empire.
    

36. 36.Letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, undated [ca 1947], Miller Papers II, op cit, vol 1, sequence no 34.
    

37. 37.Under section 8 (1) (g) of the New Zealand Institute of Architects Act 1913, Miller registered with the Institute as no 340 on 25 July 1917; letter from the Victoria University of Wellington Library to Ann Wookey, Wellington, 6 October 1987, author’s collection, see also this chapter, fn 13. In the face of biographic comment found elsewhere, it should be noted that no university architectural training was available in New Zealand until 1918.
    

38. 38.Letter from Miller to unknown correspondent, no address [London?], not dated [mid-1930s], Miller Papers I, op cit., vol 14, ~ p 140. Mason & Wales no longer has ready access to any record of him, if held at all; letter from Mason & Wales / Architects Ltd. to Ann Wookey, Dunedin, 20 October 1987, author’s collection, see also this chapter, fn 14.
    

39. 39.See McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art [1984], op cit, vol 2, p 800. Melbourne artist Roger James learnt on a visit to Suva that Miller had designed a hotel with tower there, but it was not a remarkable building in his opinion; conversation with Roger James, Melbourne, 2 May 1988, notes held, author’s collection.
    

40. 40.Letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, London, 11 July 1938, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 8, p 353 [bracket my addition]. A question exists as to whether Miller remained in the main family home or perhaps moved to another residence with his father. His address in July 1917 when he registered with the New Zealand Institute of Architects was 23 Leven Street, Roslyn, Dunedin; Victoria University of Wellington Library [October 1987], op cit. However, his army record detailed his address between October 1914 and July 1920 as 16 Constitution Street, Dunedin; New Zealand Defence Force [June 1992], op cit. Since he received an army pension from June 1916 through into 1920 and afterwards, the address to which this was sent can be expected to have been recorded on his file. Moreover, Miller was not resident in New Zealand between 1918 and 1920. The pension may thus have been paid to someone else - Miller alluded many years later to some such arrangement; see letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, 4 October 1940, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 21, p 89, also my Chapter 8, fn 42.
    

41. 41.Miller was not recorded as a student for 1917 at the Otago School of Art and Design where O’Keeffe was by all accounts then teaching, although O’Keeffe took private pupils at times; on the last point, see McIntyre [1962], op cit, p 26 [O’Keeffe’s name was once again incorrectly spelt there, as “O’Keefe”]. There are also conflicting recordings as to when Miller first knew O’Keeffe; see Appendix 2, entry for Alfred Henry O’Keeffe.
    

42. 42.The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Thirtieth Annual Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery, Whitmore Street, Wellington, 1918, cat no 424, as second prize in “Class 1 - Head from Life or Antique” to ‘G. Clive Miller’; letter and photocopy [part catalogue] from the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts to Ann Wookey, Wellington, 17 May 1988, author’s collection, and Robin Kay and Tony Eden, Portrait of a Century: the History of the N.Z. Academy of Fine Arts 1882-1982, Wellington, Millwood Press, 1983, p 207.
    

43. 43.Since Miller’s classes in Melbourne would have included drawing from the antique, it is possible that he sent a drawing to either the competition or some other person in New Zealand. The latter is suggested by this being the only piece of his work exhibited before 1952.
    

44. 44.National Gallery School Rollbooks, Melbourne, State Library of Victoria. Miller’s address lodged in 1918 with the New Zealand Institute of Architects was simply “National Gallery Swanstone St Melbourne”; Victoria University of Wellington Library [October 1987], op cit.
    

45. 45.Hall quotation from Leonard B Cox, National Gallery of Victoria 1861-1968: a Search for a Collection as cited, including brackets, by June Helmer, George Bell - the Art of Influence, Richmond, Victoria, Greenhouse Publications, 1985, pp 26, 111 fn 5, see also Frances Lindsay, comp & Lucy F Kerley, introductory essay, Von Guerard to Wheeler: the First Teachers at the National Gallery School, 1870-1939, exhibition catalogue, Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne, 6 - 21 April 1978.
    

46. 46.McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art [1984], op cit, vol 2, p 739; see also Appendix 2, entry for William Beckwith McInnes.
    

47. 47.As Miller was only ever enrolled in the Drawing School, it follows that he would have been restricted to those classes in which drawing students could win prizes, that is, for drawings from casts; see Appendix 2, entry for National Gallery of Victoria School of Art.
    

48. 48.Henshaw records Miller’s arrival in Australia as in 1919, and that he remained for ten years, Osborne has him arriving in Melbourne in 1920 and living for ten years at Warrandyte, while McCulloch gives his arrival as in the summer of 1919-20 to live in Warrandyte, with nothing further mentioned until studying in London during 1929-31; see Henshaw, Godfrey Miller [1965], op cit, Osborne [1981], op cit, p 373, and McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art [1984], op cit, vol 2, p 800.
    

49. 49.Department of Immigration, New South Wales Branch, Microfilm of Volumes of Inward Passenger Lists - Ships, Chronological series to 1923, Sydney, Archives Office of New South Wales, roll no  2107; while no details of Miller’s leaving for the Far East are known, he came from Japan, Hong Kong, Manila, and down Australia’s eastern seaboard stopping in Brisbane, to re-enter Australia at Sydney on 13 September 1919, a passenger aboard the Burns Philp ship SS Aki Maru. Trip also noted on Godfrey Clive Miller File, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales Archives. A postcard from Hong Kong talked of his China journey; postcard from Miller to Mick, Hong Kong, 1 July 1919, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 11, p 1a. Intriguingly, in 1935 he categorically denied having visited China, maintaining that he had not the “impetuosity” as a youth to overcome the obstacles which faced the China traveller; letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, London, 14 October 1935, ibid, vol 7, p 154.
    

50. 50.Miller’s address held by the New Zealand military authorities was changed to 102 Powlett Street, East Melbourne, in July 1920; New Zealand Ministry of Defence [November 1987], op cit [reproduced in Appendix 1]. The 1921 address of 5 Carson Street, Kew, comes from the New Zealand Institute of Architects register for 1921 while dates of 1922 and 1923 for this house are known from Miller’s correspondence; Victoria University of Wellington Library [October 1987], op cit; see also letters from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, 30 May and 16 December 1922, and 1 June 1923, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 7, pp 2, 5-17. A further reference to living in Kew during 1923 was made by Miller in 1940; letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, 11 October 1940, ibid, vol 21, p 145; see also Appendix 2, entries for Guthrie Grant and Nancy Grant.
    

51. 51.Letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 30 May 1922, ibid, vol 7, p 2. His injury from 1915, which at the time had caused some paralysis in his upper right arm and was still worrying him in December 1922, needed an operation while he lived in Melbourne and caused an ongoing inability to hold the arm extended; see letters from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 16 December 1922, to Lewis Miller, Sydney, 25 July 1940, and to Mr Sacks, Sydney, 5 December 1962, ibid. vol 7, p 10, vol 20, p 213, and vol 14 p 56; also this chapter, fn 31, and Appendix 1, letter from Professor Ludbrook, op cit.
    

52. 52.Letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, 16 December 1922, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 7, p 8.
    

53. 53.These writers are referred to by Miller between 1922 and 1924; see letters from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, 16 December 1922, 1 June 1923, and 14 May 1924, ibid, vol 7, pp 4-23.
    

54. 54.A copy of Balzac’s The Quest of the Absolute was donated to the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne by Colonel Aubrey Gibson, well-known to Melbourne’s art circles for many years, which implies that the Colonel was also interested in the Symbolist tradition. Moreover, Miller’s painting, Blue landscape [Plate 88] entered Gibson’s collection in 1956, a rare honour since the artist was extremely hesitant about selling his work, and suggesting that the two men knew each other - quite possibly, therefore, during the 1920s. The interests of both men can be linked to a growing awareness in New Zealand and Australian artistic circles of French Symbolism during the last decade of the nineteenth and first two decades of the twentieth centuries. The Australian artists Tom Roberts, Charles Conder and David Davies, and the New Zealand artists James Nairn and A F O’Keeffe all attended the Académie Julian in Paris during the late nineteenth century, with Davies and O’Keeffe there either with or shortly after some of the artists of the Nabi group. These attendances provide a direct French connection for the Æsthetic Movement and Symbolist tendency in Australasian art in the late nineteenth century. Furthermore, Melbourne painter George Bell was at the Julian in 1904.  O’Keeffe, Conder and Bell were all known to Miller, while Roberts, Conder and Davies exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne during the 1920s; Helen Topliss, Tom Roberts 1856-1931: a Catalogue Raisonne, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985, vol 1, pp 76, 77, McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art [1984], op cit, vol 1, pp 225-227, 269, 270, Cameron Sparks, David Davies 1864-1939, exhibition catalogue, Ballaarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, 1984, p 22, and Platts [1980], op cit, pp 177, 178; see also Appendix 2, entries for George Henry Frederick Bell and Alfred Henry O’Keeffe.
    

55. 55.Letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 1 June 1923, Miller Papers I, op cit. vol 7, p 15. On these trips, etc, see letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, London, 11 July 1938, ibid, vol 8 p 356; this was Miller’s second visit to Auckland, the first having been for his father’s operation ca 1917. The Niatapu Ranges have not been located. However, the Gazetteer of New Zealand Place Names records a survey point of similar name, Maniatapu, below Auckland in the mountains behind Hawera, Wanganui and Palmerston North; Gazetteer of New Zealand Place Names, New Zealand Department of Lands and Survey, 1968. This, then, is the area where T T Miller managed banks for many years and Godfrey is believed to have spent his youth before 1908.
    

56. 56.National Gallery School Rollbooks, op cit.
    

57. 57.See letters from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Warrandyte, 1 June 1923 and 14 May 1924, Miller Papers I, op cit. vol 7, pp 14, 18-20; Miller had taken a house at Warrandyte for three months, the Kew house mistakenly understood to have been sold [Grant lived at 5 Carson Street again over 1930 and 1931]. Melba gave a farewell gala performance of La Bohème at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne in about 1924; see Joan Lindsay, Time without Clocks, Melbourne, F W Cheshire, 1962, p 23.
    

58. 58.Sands & McDougall Directory of Victoria, Melbourne, 1924, p 2234, and 1925, p 2307, La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. Since Godfrey is not a common name in directories of the 1920-30s, it is believed that these 1924 and 1925 listings at 49 Capel Street, West Melbourne, could well be to the artist.
    

59. 59.Miller inherited into the family company, John Duthie and Co Ltd, on the death of his mother in 1896. The inheritance would most normally have become available to him when he turned 21 in 1914. For the chastisement, see letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, London, 9 March 1936, Miller Papers I, op cit. vol 7, p 222.
    

60. 60.Letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, Sydney, 23 May 1957, Miller Papers II, op cit. vol 2, sequence no 8. Close friends outside artistic circles who have been identified for the 1920s are Arthur Fenwick, an English civil engineer known to Miller since a youth in New Zealand and C V Allen, a psychologist attached to the Melbourne branch of the Pelman Institute, a memory-training organisation; see Dr William L Anderson and Appleton A Mason, Pelmanism and Health Culture, London, T Werner Laurie Ltd, not dated, and also Appendix 2, entries for Arthur Fenwick and C V Allen.
    

61. 61.The names Mrs Freedman, Miss Freedman, Miss Freman and Miss Freeman found through Miller’s correspondence introduce one of the many confusions associated with his life. Were they the one person, with Miller exhibiting the inaccuracy for detail that frequently marks his letters, or were they different acquaintances? The possibility of the latter arises from Madge Freeman, an artist, and Leslie Freedman, an artist’s model, both having lived in Melbourne during the 1920-30s, although most probably at different times to each other; see also this chapter, text following, Chapter 6, fn 39, and Appendix 2, entries for people mentioned and the Australian Art Association, Melbourne.
    

62. 62.Crozier, Bell and McCubbin had all returned uninjured [although McCubbin’s brother Hugh was injured at Gaba Tebe in 1915], and Boyd and Napier Waller, injured. MacKenzie examines connections for the Melbourne artist families, the Colquhouns and McCubbins; Andrew MacKenzie, Frederick McCubbin 1855-1917: ‘The Proff and his Art’, Lilydale, Victoria, Mannagum Press, 1990. Arnold Shore, who was later known to Miller, had also been at the National Gallery School with Bessie Colquhoun and Louis McCubbin’s sister Sheila in 1917; National Gallery School Rollbooks, op cit.
    

63. 63.The Waller house overlooked Darebin Creek from Crown Road, Ivanhoe; Kevin Childs, ‘Sale of Waller property draws criticism from art lovers’, news item, The Age, Melbourne, 17 March 1990. “Fairy Hills” in Darebin overlooked the Yarra near its confluence with Darebin Creek in Ivanhoe. MacGeorge also lectured for WEA Melbourne University Extension courses that were similar to classes Miller attended later in London [and again during his still later Sydney years]. There was a probability, therefore, of his having done likewise in Melbourne, thus providing another avenue by which he could have come to know the Australian Art Association circle; see also my Chapter 2, fn 41, Chapter 6, fn 26, and Appendix 2, entries for Norman MacGeorge and the Workers’ Educational Association.
    

64. 64.Bell’s classes are recorded from 1922 by Fry and Gray, and from 1923 by Helmer, who also implies discussions of Modernism not to have taken place there until the second half of the decade; Gavin Fry and Anne Gray, Masterpieces of the Australian War Memorial, Adelaide, Rigby Publishers, 1982, p 127, and Helmer [1985], op cit, pp 59, 61. Two other opinions support the assessment of Miller not having attended Bell’s classes: Mary Eagle has pointed out that Bell’s classes during the 1920s were a small select group, many of whom had talked with her, and that Miller was never mentioned while Melbourne artist Roger James believes, possibly mistakenly, that the Miller-Bell acquaintance was as slight as them having met only; conversation with Mary Eagle, Canberra, October 1991, notes held, author’s collection, and James [2 May 1988 notes], op cit.
    

65. 65.See Appendix 2, entry for the Victorian Artist’s Society.
    

66. 66.Helmer [1985], op cit, p 51.
    

67. 67.Helmer dates Nibbi’s bookshop opening to 1930, the year that Smith claims it to have become well-known for its stock of contemporary European art and literature after having opened in 1928; ibid, pp 62, 66, and Bernard Smith, in Bernard Smith and Terry Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1990, 3rd edn, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp 194, 195; see also Sir William Orpen, The Outline of Art, London, George Newnes Limited, 1923.
    

68. 68.Smith and Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1990 [1991], op cit. p 182.
    

69. 69.Hamish McDonald, ‘Penleigh Boyd and the 1923 exhibition of modern European art’, Art and Australia, vol 25, no 4, Winter 1988, pp 506-511.
    

70. 70.Alan McCulloch talking of Godfrey Miller, Mornington, 5 September 1987, Interview with Ann Wookey, author’s collection; the episode was believed to have occurred in the late 1920s [McCulloch held that Miller was certainly paranoiac during the 1950s]. The friendship at the time between Miller and C V Allen could have involved psychological counselling; see this chapter, fn 60, and Appendix 2, entry for C V Allen.
    

71. 71.Miller was passenger no 92 on SS Oronsay [Orient Steam Navigating Co Ltd] out of Melbourne on 30 August 1929;  Department of Trade and Customs, Victoria, Outward Passenger Lists, 1924-1944, Melbourne, Australian Archives, MP56/9, August 1929. Later in 1964 Miller recorded having gone to Tasmania then ‘in some kind of desperation’ which suggests he was distressed at the time. Since his sister Mera lived there for some of this decade perhaps his visit was in search of family sympathy and counselling [she is mentioned in this letter]; letter from Miller to Barc [Tasmania], Sydney, 3 May 1964, Godfrey Clive Miller, Letter to Helen Priscilla Crabb [Barc], May 1964, private collection, New Zealand [typewritten photocopy, author’s collection]. T T Miller resided in Lindfield between 1926-28; Sands Sydney & NSW Directory, Sydney, 1926, p 1623, Sydney, State Library of New South Wales [directories for 1916 to 1932/3 were checked, but no other references found]. The conjecture that Miller lived there also follows from his admission in 1936 to nursing his father through “many a night” in Australia and later still, in 1940, to having previously known Lindfield; see letter from Miller to Malcolm Miller, London, 9 July 1936, Miller Papers I, op cit. vol 12, p 44, also Appendix 2, entry for Helen Priscilla Crabb [Barc].
    

72. 72.By December 1922 Miller had reproduced ‘a fine upstanding bay [horse] in all truthfulness’; letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 16 December 1922 [bracket my addition], see also letter from Miller to Arthur Fenwick, Melbourne, 30 May 1922, ibid, vol 7, pp 2, 6.
    

73. 73.The method is readily seen in the Early Warrandyte landscape [Plate 4], a work that is similar in style and colour to Dusk, Warrandyte (Early landscape, Warrandyte) [Plate 5] but without the lacquer that obscures the latter.
    

74. 74.Solomon Joseph Solomon, The Practice of Oil Painting and of Drawing as Associated with It, London, Seeley and Co Limited, 1910, pp 74, 75. Miller’s source was identified by English artist Peter Swan; conversation with Peter Swan, Bristol, February 1992. Solomon’s book entered the Public Library of Victoria in Melbourne in 1910, and was therefore readily available to Miller after 1918.
    

75. 75.Miller’s manner of building compositions became known through conservator Jacqueline Macnaughton’s examination of Dusk, Warrandyte (Early landscape, Warrandyte) [Plate 5] and Warrandyte [Plate 16], for which I am indebted; report from Jacqueline Macnaughton to Ann Wookey, Canberra, November 1988, author’s collection. Other evidence of this approach comes from a board on which a sepia-toned landscape sketch is thinly painted [this board has since been used to back a painting, Still life, London (Table group, London) [Plate 12], ca 1929-33.  Although different compositionally, the sketch is of the same style as Warrandyte landscape [Plate 4] and Dusk, Warrandyte [Plate 5] of the 1920s, and the later Warrandyte [Plate 16], with similarities found in the handling of tree trunks and foliage. Solomon advises that canvases would loose their freshness after more than three, or at the most four, applications of thin layers of paint. He also recommends the use of wood panels for landscape, perhaps accounting for the Miller’s sketch on board, and advises students to experiment with different weaves of canvas to establish their working preference, a point of interest to an ongoing debate about dating Dusk, Warrandyte [Plate 5] and Warrandyte [Plate 16] - the two are on different types of canvas, the first at approximately 14 threads per cm sq, the second at approximately 9 threads per cm sq; Solomon [1910], op cit, pp 68, 71, 72, and  Macnaughton [1988], op cit.
    

76. 76.John Ruskin, Modern Painters, London, George Allen, 1888 [1st edn 1848-60], and Ogden Nicholas Rood, Modern Chromatics with Application to Art and Industry, London, C Kegan Paul & Co. 1879. Ruskin’s Modern Painters and Rood’s Modern Chromatics entered Melbourne’s Public Library prior to Miller’s attending the National Gallery School - the 1888 edition of Modern Painters was bequeathed by Alfred Felton in 1904 and Rood’s Modern Chromatics acquired on publication in 1879 [and by the University of Melbourne library in 1887]. As recorded already, Miller knew Ruskin’s writing from New Zealand. While no record of Miller attaches to either the Meldrum or Bell schools, Miller’s artist friends from the early 1920s would have discussed the merits of Meldrum’s teachings, which had been published as an essay probably in about 1917, and the same can be argued for Bell and his earliest schools; see also quotation from Miller as to his periods in my ‘Introduction’, this chapter, fn 80, and Appendix 2, entries for George Henry Frederick Bell and Duncan Max Meldrum.
    

77. 77.Of these sixteen early pictures, nine have been seen, two are known through colour reproduction and the other five through black and white reproduction. Warrandyte [Plate 16] which is very close both in composition and colour to Dusk, Warrandyte (Early landscape, Warrandyte) [Plate 5] has been identified as most probably painted in London.  Conversely, the pencil grid on Dusk, Warrandyte  is thought to have been overlaid during the 1930s, long after the work was first painted; see also Appendix 3, Group A.
    

78. 78.George Grahame, ‘Claude Lorrain, painter & etcher’, The Portfolio, no 15, London, Seeley and Co Limited, 1895, pp 65-68.
    

79. 79.Ruskin, Modern Painters [1892], op cit, vol I, p 69; more generally, see ibid, pp 66-70; also John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing, repr, New York, Dover Publications Inc, 1971, p 184.
    

80. 80.Max Meldrum, ‘The invariable truths of depictive art’, in Colin Colahan, ed, Max Meldrum: his Art and his Views, Melbourne, Alexander McCubbin, not dated [ca 1917], fig 12. The painting illustrated by Meldrum was Camille Corot, Souvenir de Mortfontaine (Oise), ca 1864, 65 x 89cm, signed ‘Corot’, acquired Musée du Louvre in 1889, acc no MI 692 bis; Isabelle Compin, Anne Roquebert, Jacques Foucart, and Elizabeth Foucart-Walter, Catalogue Sommaire Illustré des Peintures du Musée du Louvre et Musée d’Orsay, vol III, Ecole Française A-K, Paris, Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Ministère de la Culture at de la Communication, 1986, p 147; about my acceptance of 1917 as when Colahan’s book appeared, see Appendix 2, entry for Duncan Max Meldrum.
    

81. 81.Illustrated Catalogue of the National Gallery, Melbourne, The Trustees of the Public Library, Museum and National Gallery of Victoria, 1921, cat no 108, and Ursula Hoff, European Painting and Sculpture before 1800, 3rd edn, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 1973, pp 35, 36. Miller’s sketch has some similarities as well, both in design and the medium’s application, to Trees, ca 1903-13 [Plate 139], by the New Zealand domiciled Dutch artist Petrus van der Velden. These occur in the placement of form and its strongly diagonal thrust, the patterning of light and shade, especially beneath the trees in the foreground, and the structuring of movement into distance through lighter planes located above a dark foreground. Trees is a watercolour from van der Velden’s final years in Wellington [after 1905] during which he is believed to have take private pupils, although we do not know if Miller was one of these. The influence could, however, have been less direct; for instance, Miller’s earliest teacher Alfred O’Keeffe not only admired van der Velden and owned some of his paintings but, Wilson holds, was influenced by him as to colour and technique. Van der Velden’s work was readily seen in exhibitions through these years as well; T L Rodney Wilson, Petrus Van der Velden (1837-1913): a Catalogue Raisonné, Sydney, Chancery Chambers [Publishers], 1979, vol 1, p 74, see also Appendix 2, entry for Petrus van der Velden.
    

82. 82.In 1936 Miller wrote, ‘Painters prior to Cézanne said that to “get distance” you must paint more and more faint as you get away into far off objects’, indicating that he was clearly aware of the practice; letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, London, 15 August 1936, Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 18, p 60 [partly reproduced in Appendix 1]; see also Ruskin, Modern Painters [1892], op cit, vol 3, pl 4 [opp p 122].
    

83. 83.Miller twice acknowledged Claude as inspirational, later in life admitting to have found Claude impressive for his light, structure and design, and “general power”; Miller, File, The Tate Gallery Archives, op cit, and see my ‘Introduction’, quotation from Miller as to his periods. No Claude paintings or works after Claude entered the National Gallery of Victoria until 1946; Hoff [1973], op cit, p 26.
    

84. 84.Three volumes of prints after Claude, the Liber Veritatis published by John Boydell in 1777 and acquired by the Public Library in 1864-65, are likely to have been available for study by students at the National Gallery School, as would their holdings of over eight other volumes illustrating Claude;  Claude Lorrain, Liber Veritatis: or, A Collection of Two Hundred Prints after the Original Designs of Claude le Lorrain, in the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, Executed by Richard Earlom in the Manner and Taste of the Drawings, London, John Boydell [engraver], 1777.
    

85. 85.The Gallery acquired Dunstanborough Castle, sunrise after a squally night, 1798 [Plate 135] in 1888 and Walton Bridges, ca 1806, in 1919-20, while Okehampton, Devonshire, ca 1826, arrived in 1905; Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London, Academy Editions, 1979, cat nos P6, P63 and 802, and Hoff [1973], op cit, pp 156-158.
    

86. 86.J M W Turner, Turner’s Liber Studorium. Photographs from Fifty-one Original Drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., in the South Kensington Museum, London, Arundel Society with the sanction of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council of Education, London, ca 1861, J M W Turner, Turner’s Liber Studorium: a Description and Catalogue, essay by W G Rawlinson, London, MacMillan, 1878, and J M W Turner, Liber Studorium, intro C F Bell, London, George Newnes Limited, and New York, Charles Scribners’ Sons,1904; the library also held many other volumes from before 1918 illustrating Turner’s drawings, watercolours and oils;  also this chapter, fn 76. Turner who worked over 1806/7-23 on the Liber Studorium began publishing from 1811 and was still printing from the set in 1845; John Gage, Colour in Turner:  Poetry and Truth, London, Studio Vista, 1969, pp 43, 47.
    

87. 87.Rood [1879], op cit. pp 306, 307, 314. Professor of Physics at Columbia College in the United States and an amateur painter, Rood’s stated intention was to present the fundamentals, as then understood, of the perception of colour to ‘the general or artistic reader’.
    

88. 88.Macnaughton [November 1988], op cit. The dullness of Dusk, Warrandyte (Early landscape, Warrandyte) [Plate 5] caused by the probable discolouring and darkening of a wax or wax resin coating applied to the canvas surface disallows the full colour range present;  a similarity with Warrandyte landscape [Plate 4] is to be expected. There the sky is painted in small strokes sloping down from left to right, using beige browns, pale ochres and some washed-out grey-blue, while the landscape is in mid to dark browns and olive green with just a few very small spots of turquoise in the lower left section. Whether Miller might have known David Davies’ work, perhaps from pictures exhibited during the 1920s, should be asked since Dusk, Warrandyte has similarities with Davies’ style and technique; see Sparks [1984], op cit.
    

89. 89.See Ruskin, Modern Painters [1892], op cit, vol I, pp 97, 138-151.
    

90. 90.The phrase “dominant colour key” is used broadly to encompass whatever major colour theme Miller developed in a work, whether as given here or, as we encounter later, in pairs of pigment colour or colour-light complementaries, Rood triads, the set of four psychological primaries [red, blue, yellow, green], etc.
    

91. 91.Miller’s Early still life [Plate 8] is characterised also by the use of a square brushstroke and the multi-directional application of paint, a technique seen again in his Haystacks [Plate 7], and similar to Bell’s method in Farmyard, 1921 [Plate 158]. The use of a regular and square brushstroke, an Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist device, was popular among Melbourne painters through the first few decades of the twentieth century; see also Appendix 2, entry for William Beckwith McInnes.
    

92. 92.The advice of Solomon on colour was close to that of Rood. Solomon outlined two methods with oil paint, “grisaille” or monochrome with scumbled colour and subsequent glazing, and “direct colour reproduction”. The first approach taught the painter how to most successfully handle light and shade and “tone values”. Grisaille was begun, albeit in working from antique casts, as underdrawing in charcoal [dusted off so that faint indications remained] followed by the definition of these lines using ‘a thin mixture of raw umber and turpentine’. Three tones derived from raw umber and white were then applied as ‘the background, the middle tint and the general tone of the shadow’. The method seems not as coincidental with Miller’s technique as is Rood’s. However, the palette Solomon recommended was close to the colours Miller deployed through these years. Like Rood, Solomon warned against the use of greens [chromes and emerald oxide] - because they were rarely required, while also attaching some instability to these colours as oils; see Solomon [1910], op cit. pp 62, 65, 75, 76, 79, 83.
    

93. 93.Art Nouveau was to be seen especially in painting in the work of Sydney Long and in Charles Conder’s late pictures. Sweet recalls Miller as having searched for Conder works in London during the 1930s, although a misunderstanding may be present since Miller’s letters indicate that his brother Malcolm had a Conder for sale in 1936; Sweet [1992], op cit.
    

94. 94.Since Miller was likely to have worked only from the antique while at Melbourne’s National Gallery School, the placement of Seated figure [Plate 106] into his first period means that he worked from the nude elsewhere during those years. Not only does the circle of professional artists with whom he mixed allow the possibility credence, but he himself later referred to models he had used in Melbourne; see letters from Miller to Miss Freman, London, 11 December 1935, and to Allen, London, undated [ca early 1936], Miller Papers I, op cit, vol 12, p 251, and vol 14, p 177. These modelling assignments could have taken place when Miller returned to Melbourne briefly in 1932. The style of Seated figure [Plate 106] in comparison with a drawing from the London years such as Nude sketch [Plate 110] indicates otherwise.
    

95. 95.Rood [1879], op cit. pp 314, 315.
    

96. 96.On Meldrum, see Colahan, nd [ca 1917], op cit, pp 47, 57. In 1936 Miller used the term “dirtying” about pre-Modernist colour practices, meaning colour darkened by adding browns and greys and with which he associated painted shadows; letter from Miller to Lewis Miller, London, 15 August 1936, Miller Papers I, op cit. vol 18, pp 50,57 [partly reproduced in Appendix 1]. For Bell’s teaching, see Helmer [1985], op cit, p 11.
    

97. 97.Contrast harmony involves the placement of complementary colours in close conjunction so to maximise the heightened colour effects to be gained from their contrast. The use of the term “colour-light” to refer to effects known through the scientific understanding of light and colour has been adopted from Herbert; Robert L Herbert, Françoise Cachin, Anne Distel, Susan Alyson Stein and Gary Tinterow, Georges Seurat 1859-1891, exhibition catalogue, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 9 April - 12 August 1991, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 24 September 1991 – 12 January 1992, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991, p 390.
    

98. 98.See Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing [1971], op cit, p 200, and Rood [1879], op cit, p 315.
    

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