Otago Daily
Times, Mon., July 14, 1969.
Gallery Stages
Exhibition By the Late Ralph Miller
by Tom Esplin
This is what normally might be considered the off season
for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Half the rooms are
closed for renovation and repainting, but in spite of this
disruption time has been found to display an interesting
Memorial Exhibition of work by the late Ralph Miller.
Some 90 works in pencil and conte, pen and wash and
watercolour are displayed in two rooms. They are, for the
most part, small and intimate in size, often leaves from
his sketchbooks and they have been assembled from the
collection still in the possession of the artist’s widow.
Care has been taken to choose examples that show the
development of style that took place in his work and the
range of subject matter that attracted the artist’s
attention.
Ralph Miller died, tragically young, aged 37, in 1956. He
was born in Dunedin and had his initial training with his
brother Roy as a signwriter in his father’s business. His
interest in art, however, led him to take lessons with A.
H. O’Keefe in a studio that artist had in South Princes
Street.
There he learned the rudiments of painting in oil, but this
medium did not attract him so much as watercolour, and it
was as a pupil of Kathleen Salmond that he subsequently
developed and formed the direction his art was to take.
Progress
His other interest lay in band music and, with his brother,
he played in the St Kilda Municipal Band. On the outbreak
of war in the Pacific area, Ralph Miller volunteered for
service and entered Burnham Camp in 1940, where, for a year
he was a member of the Army band, playing the euphonium.
For the remaining years of the war he served, first in Fiji
and then in New Caledonia. The exhibition clearly shows his
progress through these areas.
The sketches of life at Burnham are careful, but often very
lively notations of tent life and army types. In Fiji, the
exotic landscape attracted him and in Noumea he often found
his subjects in the French colonial architecture. But
people always remained one of the chief studies for his
pencil and brush.
On his return from three years of military service, he went
back to the business of
signwriting. But all his spare time was occupied in
sketching. Often, he found his subjects in the streets of
Dunedin; vivid glimpses of the Stock Exchange, little
corner shops and many areas that have now been demolished,
or changed out of all recognition.
The exhibition has many examples of this phase of his work.
His street scenes are never just of buildings, for they are
crowded with the people of Dunedin hurrying across his
sketches. His knowledge of human anatomy had been greatly
increased by attending the life classes at King Edward
Technical College, under the direction of Fred Shewell.
In 1944, Ralph Miller was accepted as an artist member of
the Otago Art Society and he exhibited regularly at the
exhibitions. Two of his works are now in the collection of
the Invercargill Art Gallery. In 1949, he was elected
Council Member of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Observer
In the last phase of his work, such paintings as “The
Promenade, St Clair” and “Shield Fever” show that his tyle
was maturing. Undoubtedly, this is the most important and
the most interesting period of his work, for he was
reaching towards a style that had in it something of the
quality of the work of Ardizzone, or even Rowlandson.
He could best express himself through the attitudes, the
habits and the characteristics of people. and he was a keen
observer of life.
Underlying all he did, there was always a desire for
perfection and a search for the expressive line. He thought
more as a draughtsman than a painter, and often his colour
was used to support the drawing in an illustrative way. He
was always reluctant to show his work, being a modest,
reserved man, sensitive and sincere. This exhibition will
give great pleasure to many who appreciate his qualities.