Godfrey Miller
Three paintings
22 October - 19 November 2022

Godfrey Clive Miller was born in Wellington, New Zealand, 20 August 1893 and died in Paddington, Sydney New South Wales, Australia 10 May 1964.

Miller first trained as an architect in Wellington prior to enlisting in the New Zealand army. He was posted to Egypt in January 1915 where he developed an interest in Egyptian Art. He subsequently studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. He travelled to Sydney in 1939 where he joined the anthroposophical society. Miller taught at the East Sydney Technical College from 1948 and first started exhibiting, with the Sydney Group, via the Macquarie Galleries in 1952 at the age of fifty nine.

Miller held four solo exhibitions in his lifetime, the second a retrospective mounted in 1959 by the National Gallery of Victoria. The Tate Gallery in 1961 acquired his work 'Triptych with Figures' (1938-54) in 1961. Miller’s last exhibition was in the Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School presented for his students.

A contemporary source relayed a story indicative of his personality. Miller would regularly take himself to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to survey his works, armed with a small painting kit. When certain he was alone and unobserved he would rework the canvasses on the museum walls, over the years the paintings would slowly evolve and change.

He only ever exhibited approximately forty paintings.

Image credit: Rudi Williams