From 1893 until 1897, Richard Miller attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts. During his last year at the School, he also worked as an artist reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1898, accompanied by the etcher George Aid, Miller went to Paris, on a three-year scholarship. He enrolled at the Academie Julian, studying under Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant. During the next twenty years, Paris was his home, although he returned to St. Louis occassionally to execute portraits. Between 1901 and 1906, Miller taught at the Academie Colarossi, and held summer classes in Giverny and in St. Jean du Doight, in Brittany. Miller began receiving artistic recognition by 1901, when he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon, and was awarded a silver medal at the St. Louis Exposition. His early Paris works which dated from 1901 to 1910, often depicted peasant women in interiors. He was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor in 1906. Miller married Harriet Adams of Providence, Rhode Island, in London in 1907.
After his return to America in 1918, Miller travelled the country. After he settled permanently in Provincetown, the artist became known as one of the founders of the art colony. Miller favored an impressionist palette in pictures of elegant women and nudes set in luxurious settings for which he is best known. During the depression years, he was affiliated with the WPA, serving as director of the CWA, art project for Cape Cod. Miller executed four murals for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson. He died in Florida on a winter vacation.
