Two Figures
Artist
Kenneth Hayes Miller
(American, 1876 - 1952)
Date1935
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions24 x 20 in.
ClassificationsOil Painting
Credit LineGift of Mrs. Denys Wortman
Terms
Object number1982.37
Description"Two Figures' portrays a fashionable man and woman walking arm in arm down a city street. Their gazes are directed to the right, and the woman, positioned slightly behind her companion, leans toward him, lips slightly parted as if about to speak. The urban site and the composition of figures in a shallow street setting with monumental architectural elements is altogether typical of Miller's work of the period. The man, whose figure dominates the picture space, receives additional prominence through his framing by the darkened arch flanked by massive columns. Two working men, a newsboy, and a woman heading out of the frame to the right are stock Milleresque figures who augment the urban character and class diversity of the scene. As a portrayal of a couple and as a portrait, however, Two Figures represents a double departure from Miller's typical subjects. In scenes usually populated by women, men may appear on the same streets, and in a small number of works they are the primary subjects, but Miller rarely portrayed interaction between the sexes. This work is also a portrait of the American cartoonist and illustrator Denys Wortman (1887-1958), requested from Miller by Wortman's second wife, Hilda. Wortman, who was also interested in painting and exhibited at the National Academy of Design, had studied with Miller at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art prior to 1909, and the men had a longstanding friendship founded on mutual respect. By the mid-1930s Wortman was president of the American Society of Illustrators and had an established decade-long career as an cartoonist, delighting New Yorkers with his panel cartoon "Metropolitan Movies," which featured the tramps Mopey Dick and Duke and appeared daily in "New York World-Telegram and Sun". (1) The newsboy behind the male figure alludes to Wortman's profession; the confident expansive posture and elegant dress of the figure, to his success in the field.
In 1982, when Mrs. Wortman gave the painting to the New Britain museum, her friend Mrs. Low wrote: "She does not want the title to be 'Denys and Hilda Wortman' and you can guess why!" Hilda Wortman, who had asked Miller to paint her husband's portrait, was both surprised and displeased by her inclusion and was ultimately disatisfied with the failure at "likeness" in either of the two figures. She thus requested that the work be relabeled "Two Portraits" without further designation. (2) Indeed, a comparison of this work with photographs of Wortman suggests only general resemblance in his broad face, full lips, and strong nose. Moreover, the Wortman figure approximates a businessman type that Miller portrayed in the mid-1930s in works like Café Bar (1934; Bayley Art Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville) and "Business Lunch" (1936; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn.). This work fits comfortably into that series of images.
A comment in an August 1937 letter from Miller to the Wortmans illuminates the reasons for Mrs. Wortman's dissatisfaction. "The 'portrait' has had some retouching. The likeness(es) still leave everything to be desired, I am sure, but it is a better picture without doubt." (3) Miller frequently reworked paintings over a number of years or retrieved pictures from their owners to make changes--in this case, undoubtedly at Hilda's request. But his treatment of the word "portrait" in this letter, his reference to the quality of the picture, and his own principles of picture-making should have alerted his friends that "likeness" or some allusion to character or psychology was not foremost in his thoughts. Students and critics who appreciated the artist's work praised his rigorous intellectual approach to painting rather than his craftsmanship or expressive empathy. Wanting to update his academic training without losing hold of his reverence for the classical compositions of the Old Masters, he turned to the formalist rhetoric of such writers as Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Like them, Miller believed that the creation of solid form and coherent design depended upon the internal structural logic of the work and not the emotional content of the figure. Claiming that the greatness of the Old Masters resided in "the rightness of their abstract design," Miller never used models and instead composed by rhyming abstract shapes and colors, all of which were grafted onto compositions with solid figures. (4) "Two Figures" follows this plan. The golden colors of the palette permeate the work, linking foreground to background, while chords of garnet red are dispersed at relatively equidistant points throughout the picture and serve a similar interlocking function. The pinstripe pattern of Wortman's suit relates to the narrow vertical patterns on the newsboy's sweater. The semicircular curves of the hats, all of which line up at approximately the same level, are echoed in the arch, the semicurves of the capitals, and the niche arch on the far right. It would have been entirely consistent with Miller's practice to consider these elements first and to portray the Wortmans either from some photographic reference or, more likely still, entirely from memory. The rather generic appearance of the figures strongly suggests the latter.
The contradictory aims in Miller's work--a moderate urban realism featuring ordinary people in scenes of leisure and consumption, driven by both conventions and sources from academic classicism and modernist formal principles of composition--drew mixed responses from critics. For many, the works were overly intellectualized--an unhappy marriage between the Renaissance and the urban scene. American Scene critics praised the elevated democratic spirit that came from the the artist's combination of modes while leftist critics in the 1930s dismissed them as updated bourgeois easel paintings. Finally, others admired Miller's formalism and found his works profoundly modern. (5) Even though "Two Figures" may not have worked as a "portrait" likeness, it is one of the more engaging, interactive, and casually posed of Miller's street scenes. Miller's conception was clearly animated by the knowledge of an old and respected friend whose place in the urban world of modernity, comfort, and accomplishment he envisioned as secure.
EWT
Bibliography:
Lloyd Goodrich, "Kenneth Hayes Miller" (New York: Arts Publishing Corporation, 1930); "Kenneth Hayes Miller: A Memorial Exhibition", exhib. cat. (New York: Art Students League of New York, 1953); Lincoln Rothschild, "To Keep Art Alive: The Effort of Kenneth Hayes Miller, American Painter" (1876-1952) (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1974); Ellen Wiley Todd, "The "New Woman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Notes:
1. Walt and Roger Reed, "The Illustrator in America", 1880-1980: "A Century of Illustration" (New York: Madison Square Press, for the Society of Illustrators, 1984), p. 204; Maurice Horn, ed., "The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons", (New York: Gale Research Company in Association with Chelsa House Publishers, 1980), vol.2. pp. 585-86; Denys Wortman, "Mopey Dick and the Duke, The Life and Times" (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1982).
2. Letters (NBMAA files) designated " Mrs. Low" and dated October 23, 1982, and November 16, 1982.
3. Kenneth Hayes Miller to Denys and Hilda Wortman, August 25, 1937, Denys Wortman Papers, 1778-1980, Hilda R. Wortman (microfilm, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., reel 3014).
4. Miller, quoted in Rothschild, To Keep Art Alive, p. 74.
5. See, for example, Hilton Kramer, "The Unhappy Fate of Kenneth Hayes Miller," "New York Times", March 11, 1979, sec. D., p. 31; John Kwiat, "John Reed Club Art Exhibition," "New Masses" 8 (February 1933): 23; Lloyd Goodrich, "Exhibitions in New York," Arts 15 (May 1929): 328-29; Walter K. Gutman, "Kenneth Hayes Miller," "Art in America" 18 (February 1930): 92; Paul Rosenfeld, "Port of New York: Essays on Fourteen American Moderns" (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), p. 143.
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