Frank D. Millet: His life and work

Der Liebesbrief, The Love Letter had been explained to me that the old man is her father, the morning post being brought to the table as was the custom in well-to-do homes. He has opened his mail, flicked the discarded letters on the floor in disinterest and has progressed on to his morning paper without a thought to his daughter who is pressing a special missive to her cheek, and is probably thinking about her response to it. Millet excelled at telling a story within a frame. These genre paintings are full of human nature and subplots. There's a lot going on in evey corner, and being a very whimsical man, he was a master at bringing two-dimensional forms to life on canvas. Portraying opposites such as youth/age, passion/indifference, etc. was a device Frank employed to great effect.If you ever get to East Bridgewater , Mass.- go to the public library where Sailing on the Bay of Naples is hung in the Millet Room. There are many little vignettes in one painting, and the expressions on the faces reveal delicious possibilities about what is going on in the interactions of the figures in the frame! Between Two Fires, in the Tate is another example just bursting with meaning among its three portrayed characters. Many of his best-loved works were made into large engravings such as this one.
 
engrave_225_copy2.jpg
 
Another steel engraving done from the painting "How the Gossip Grew" is very similar to The Love Letter, in fact the room looks nearly the same only now it's two ladies over their teacups exchanging genteel gossip. The painting on the wall on the right is the John Singer Sargent portrait of Millet's wife, Lilly. Another bit of Frank's humor.
how_the_gossip_grew.jpg
 
To Rebecca — I have tried replying to your message sent via the ET system but that doesn’t seem to be working. I would suggest you contact Shelley Dziedzic, who knows Millet’s biographer, Peter Engstrom. As you have found, she knows a lot about this subject.

To Darren — in a belated response to your post of last November, I wanted to say that your print is also valuable from a Titanic perspective —— in a "six degrees of separation" sort of way. The publishing company, Appleton, was owned by the father-in-law of Titanic survivor Charlotte Appleton; her husband also had shares in it. Further Appleton-Titanic connections include the fact that a book by J.J. Astor was published by that firm and that the U.S. editions of several novels by Elinor Glyn, Lucy Duff Gordon’s sister, were distributed by the house.
 
It is not rare indeed. Between Two Fires, The Love Letter, How The Gossip Grew, to name a few, were very popular canvases, thus many household- quality prints were made for parlor framing. His line drawings, pen and inks, etc. were also to be found in Harper's and other monthly home market magazines. Frank had the inside track on what people wanted to see, which was a tribute to his uncanny insight into human nature. Any graphic image which reflects humanity, tells a story, evokes a universal sentiment or a timeless truth about the human condition is going to be reproduced for the masses, because there will be a demand for it. Now we have posters filling the same need. Frank also managed to insert the humor in the situations and faces in some of his best-loved works, which endears him to many, no doubt. I expect some of his historical pieces such as Transvers des Sioux or the Baltimore Customs House navigation murals have been mass-produced as prints and post cards.
 
Here is a NY Times piece mentioning "FD Millet" as one of the passengers on an 1894 voyage that took Mark Twain to Europe:

The New York Times, August 16, 1894
MAYOR GILROY SAILS FOR EUROPE

He Has a Celebrated, but Gloomy Fellow Passenger in the Person of Mark Twain.

Judging from the number of cabin passengers who were carried out by yesterday's outgoing steamships, the tide of eastward travel has begun to ebb. There were many staterooms to spare on the ships that sailed, but there were also many notables among the passengers, a full list of whom was printed in The New York Times yesterday.

Mayor Gilroy, who was among those who sailed by the Paris for Southampton, said just before embarking that he was making the trip simply for a rest, and that he intended to return on the Trave, early in September.

"I do not expect," he added, "to see Mr. Grace, and my trip has no political significance whatever. I have just come from the City Hall, where I have been saying goodbye to my friends. At my request, none of them came here to see me off."

The Mayor is accompanied by his two sons and Miss Fanny Gilroy. His party was followed over the gangplank by a solemn-visaged, grizzly-mustached individual, who is known to his fellow-passengers as Samuel L. Clemens, and to a wider circle as Mark Twain. A deckhand stationed at the gangplank eyed Mark with suspicion, and, blocking the way, demanded to know if he was a passenger. The innocent who was going abroad looked dismally at his questioner and said he didn't know. Then he carefully deposited a pictorial carpetbag on the gangplank and drew forth a passenger list, which he consulted with much deliberation. He found his name inscribed thereon, and announced with an air of triumph that he was a passenger. Then he gathered up his belongings and resumed his funereal march, while the astonished deckhand made anxious inquiries as to who the melancholy person was.

To the reporters Mark Twain explained that he was going over to see his wife and family, who are in Etrerat, and who are, according to the husband, supporting a couple of doctors at that place.

"When a European doctor gets hold of a good patient," Mark Twain observed, "the medical man passes the patient along to some friend in another place, and, like the Wandering Jew, the sick person is constantly kept moving.

"I am getting to be very fond of the ocean," he added gravely, and then said, more seriously, that after the first six or seven days he found a boundless enjoyment in a trip across.

The author neglected to add that the average time of passage these days is less than six days, and there is consequently a suspicion that his love for the ocean wave is not so very deep, after all.

Mrs. Mary Frost Ormbsy, who also sailed by the Paris, goes to represent the Universal Peace Union and the American Peace Society at the International Peace Congress in Antwerp. She says she deems her appointment by both organizations to represent America in another peace congress a sufficient reply to all the published attacks against her.

Others who sailed by the Paris were Henry E. Abbey, E. A. Apgar, Dr. William H. Bennett, J. E.Comins, Co.. Greene of the Seventy-first Regiment and Mrs. Greene, Mrs. E.Stauffer Chalmers, Bolossy Kiralfy, Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, Miss Mathilde Townsend, the Rev. and Mrs. Kearsey Thomas, Count and Countess Piola Caselli, W. H. Dayton, Mr. A. G. Menocal, Bishop and Mrs. A. N. Littlejohn and Miss Littlejohn, and F. D. Millet.
 
Now this has to be one of the most exciting and beguiling Titanic related websites I've discovered so far - complete transcripts of the family papers of Frank D. Millet, held in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute. There is, honestly, far too much of genuine interest here to be even briefly summarised by me but the vast collection of letters of condolence and support sent by colleagues, friends and relations from around the world to Mrs Millet in the immediate aftermath of the disaster is particularly rivetting. Some of her correspondents seem to have adopted an almost 'stream of consciousness' approach, pouring out their anxiety and grief to Mrs Millet as news of the sinking was still coming in. And what correspondents! I nearly fell out of my chair when I read the first letter, from the greatest actress of her generation, Ellen Terry - dated 'midnight, 16th April' and beginning 'Pray God you may now have some good news'. And then there is author Henry James - 'the blackest thing in the world makes me write. We are all together under the hideous shock of this Titanic horror and we reach out to each other in the darkness'.

As previous contributions to this thread have demonstrated, opinion is still divided as to whether or not Millet was a 'good' artist - but, based on the evidence here, there can be little doubt of the enormous impact he made on everybody he met during his tragically curtailed lifetime.

Here's the link. Enjoy.

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/millfran/series3.htm
 
The New York Times of 7th April, 1912, records the presence of both Frank and Lily Millet in Rome. By all accounts, they were there to supervise the fitting-out of the Consolidated American Academy (of which Frank was the newly-appointed president) at the Villa Aurelia, which was famed for its gardens of 'surpassing loveliness'.

www.aarome.org/buildings.htm

Lily was originally to accompany her husband to America on the Titanic but, for some reason, her trip was deferred and she only went as far as Paris with him. In the letter he penned aboard ship (quoted in full in a post above), Millet describes in cryptic but tantalising terms the problems he'd encountered in Italy:

'...yes, I had a devil of a time in Rome and if this sort of thing goes on I shall chuck it. I won't lose my time and temper too. I think Mead will resign. Lily will tell you about her, the b.... she makes trouble everywhere and he, poor wretch, has to dangle about her day and night. I pity him.'

'Mead' is, of course, William Mead of the prestigious American firm of architects, McKim, Mead and White (the 'White' being Stanford White, J. Clinch Smith's brother-in-law, who had been shot by Harry K. Thaw in 1906). Who the 'b....' might have been, I have no idea. Possibly a fellow member on the board of the Academy who had rather too much to say for herself? Interestingly, the same report from the Times mentions that Millet was booked to sail with Archibald Butt and also that the John Jacob Astors were newly arrived in town from Naples, prior to going on to Paris themselves.

Reading Millet's Titanic letter again, I've been struck by his comment about 'our people'. As far as I'm aware, this remark has eluded notice until now but I do wonder if he is in fact referring to his fellow passengers of Jewish extraction? Millet was an exceptionally cultivated and well-travelled man, with an enormous range of friends and acquaintances around the world, but his throw-away remark might reflect the casual anti-Semitism of the period. Names like Guggenheim, Straus, Brandeis, Greenfield and Rothschild would have stood out a mile on the first-class passenger list and it is interesting to consider the attitude a WASP like Millet might have adopted towards them (at least, I assume that Millet was a WASP). In all fairness, however, it has to be admitted that Millet also performs a neat hatchet job on his fellow Americans in general - 'the scourge of any place they infest'!
 

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