Frank Millet's diverse career included activity as an artist, writer, translator, administrator, and war correspondent. His childhood was spent on a farm in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. While still a teenager, he served as assistant surgeon to his father and as a drummer boy in the Civil War. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1869, Millet remained in Boston, working for several newspapers and studying lithography under Dominique C. Fabronius. In 1871, he left for Antwerp, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy under Joseph van Lerius. His companions included George W. Maynard and Elijah Baxter.
Millet left Antwerp in 1872 to work on the international exposition in Vienna as secretary to the United States commissioner. Travel in Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Hungary followed this employ, but by 1875, Millet had returned to Boston. There, he executed portraits, took on some newspaper work, and aided John La Farge in his decoration of Trinity CHurch. Returning to Europe in 1877, he settled briefly in Paris before becoming a newspaper correspondent in the Russo-Turkish War. Back in Paris the next year, he served as a juror for the 1878 international exposition and married Elizabeth G. Merrill in 1879.
Once again in Boston, Millet developed an interest in historical genre of the colonial era. Moving to New York in 1880, he was elected that year to the Society of American Artists. A fascination with classical subjects led to a new group of "archaeological" works and a series of lectures on Roman costume at the National Academy in 1882. Millet visited Europe in 1882, 1883, and 1884, by which date he had decided to settle for part of each year in the new artists colony of Broadway, England. He began exhibiting paintings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English genre, an interest no doubt kindled by his ongoing restoration of an old Broadway abbey he used as a studio.
In 1892 Millet resigned his post as vice president of the National Academy and moved to Chicago to become Director of Decorations of the World's Columbian Exposition. In addition to organizing the team of American muralists, he painted his own decorations for the Manufactures and Liberal Arts and New York State Buildings. The 1890s also included a canoe trip on the Danube (1891), a North African sojourn (1896), and a stint as a war correspondent in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War (1898). His later years were filled with further travel, several important mural commissions, a four-year term on the NAD Council (1903-7), and significant activity on behalf of the American Academy in Rome. He died in the sinking of the Titanic.
