Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 22, 1994 TAG: 9405240006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Long
Likewise, a foot-loose bachelor who died in poverty in Christiansburg after a lifetime of painting these rural scenes may seem an unlikely figure to be considered "one of America's greatest folk artists."
But Lewis Miller and his watercolor sketches are featured this year in a special display at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, the nation's pre-eminent folk art museum.
Miller, an amateur painter, used his illustrations, scribblings and sketches as a visual diary of life around him from country dances to a horseback expedition to Salt Pond Mountain [now Mountain Lake].
Miller came to Christiansburg in the 1850s on visits to his older brother's family. Eventually, this Pennsylvania house carpenter and untutored painter moved south and settled in Christiansburg with a niece.
That move put the small county seat of Christiansburg on the map, at least in the world of folk art. Miller's significance for folk art connoisseurs is that he noticed the everyday occurrences of life which other artists ignored.
Visitors touring the Williamsburg museum this summer will be charmed by Miller's watercolor "The Christiansburg Party," a drawing from the museum's permanent collection. A small cavalcade of elegantly dressed horseback riders winds down a mountain road in this sketch. The artist's annotation reads, "The young ladies & gentleman of Christiansburg in company - going from Chapmans Spring to the Saltpond Mountain."
The elegance and style of this social outing hint at a wealth and a lifestyle in 1850s Christiansburg far different from the more sober, businesslike image the town conveys today.
Miller's fascination with recording daily life around him - both in his watercolor sketches and in lengthy notes he wrote on the drawings in English, German and Latin - have made him as important to social historians seeking to understand the customs and lifestyles of the period as to folk art enthusiasts. The son of a school teacher, Miller's curiosity about life ranged from herbal folk remedies to the types of animals he saw to community traditions, according to curator Barbara Luck at the Rockefeller center.
His sketchbooks, including his best known "Sketch Book of Landscapes in the State of Virginia," recorded life not only among farmers and townsfolk, but also work scenes and dances among black Americans - whose lives as slaves were rarely documented by other artists.
Miller, the 10th child of German immigrants, was blessed with wanderlust and an unending curiosity about the world around him. The lure of seeing new people and places and his inquisitive nature account for the hundreds of drawings that Luck called a "hodgepodge, ... stream-of-consciousness" portrait of the world around him.
He was also touched with a Victorian sentimentality when it came to his nieces and nephews in Virginia. This fondness, which eventually led him to move to Christiansburg to be closer to the family of his brother, a local doctor, is illustrated with small watercolor portraits, embellished with cutwork borders and other painted tokens, given as gifts to nieces and other family members.
The deaths of two great-nephews, one in the Battle of Chancellorsville and the other of a painful illness, are commemorated in fragile watercolors.
Miller's unique and charming style, his insatiable need to record the life he saw around him - even to drawing on a railroad ticket when nothing else was handy - have made him a favorite of folk art admirers.
His hometown of York, Pa., where Miller learned his first trade as a carpenter and which is also featured in many of his drawings, is planning a special exhibition of his works in 1996.
A special display of 31 of Miller's paintings and personal items at the Rockefeller museum, including the memorial to his nephews, was made possible by a Christiansburg family, Edward L. Goldsmith and his daughter, Betty Goldsmith Halberstadt, who donated the works to the museum in memory of the late Betty Stuart Goldsmith. The Goldsmith family received these works from a member of the Craig family, who were relatives of Miller's in Christiansburg.
Despite Miller's talents and the family ties that brought him to Christiansburg, his life apparently ended alone and in poverty. On display are touching letters from two of Miller's old friends in Pennsylvania replying to his pleas for money to help him through his final days.
A man who illumined the life of his times died in 1882, leaving behind few details of his own life. Miller lies buried in an untended family graveyard on a hilltop in Christiansburg, but his reputation stands secure throughout the art world.
\ Art displayed through November
The special exhibition of Lewis Miller's artwork will be on display at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in downtown Williamsburg through November. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $6.
Locally, two pieces of Miller's work can be seen at the Montgomery Museum/Lewis Miller Regional Art Center in Christiansburg which is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
by CNB