Lilian May Miller

Was born in Tokyo, Japan on July 20, 1895, her father was an American diplomat and her mother was an English teacher.  At nine years old she was enrolled at atelier Kano Tomonobu where she learned the art of Japanese wood cuts.  She had her first exhibition of her work at twelve.  When she was fourteen her father was transferred back to Washington.  This was Lilian’s first time in the United States, she attended Washington High School, then Vassar College.  She continued to paint and make color woodcuts.  In 1918 he father was named Consul General of Korea and the family moved to Seoul.  Lilian had a number of medical issues, she moved back to Japan in 1930 settling in Kyoto.  She had major cancer surgery in 1935 and in 1936 she moved with her mother to Honolulu, Hawaii for a few years before settling in San Francisco in 1938.

In life Lilian May Miller lived a life of contradictions.  When she would exhibit her work she wore formal kimonos, in the outside world she preferred to wear men’s clothes of the era and referred to herself as Jack. Her collectors and dealers included a network of key female art patrons of the time, including Empress Nagako of Japan, Lou Henry Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover; Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Elizabeth Whitmore; and Pasadena art dealer Grace Nicholson. It was Nicholson's Pasadena residence, now the Pacific Asia Museum, where Miller perhaps felt most at home outside Japan.

Her work is in numerous institutional collections and is considered rare, she destroyed most of her Japanese work after Japan attacked Pearl Harber on December 7, 1941, feeling betrayed by Japan.