Arthur Millier

Arthur Henry Thomas Millier was born in Somerset, England in 1893. Millier immigrated to California in 1908, and after graduating from Los Angeles High School, studied at the local Art Student League. From 1913–15, he was involved in commercial art. His art pursuits were interrupted by World War I, in which he served in France with the First Canadian Pioneers and was wounded at the Battle of the Somme. Following the war, Millier lived in San Francisco, where he attended the California School of Fine Arts (San Francisco) and etched a series of street scenes. By 1922, Millier had his first one-man exhibition of etchings. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 1922, he taught part-time at the Chouinard School, Otis Art Institute, USC and Pasadena Art Institute. In 1926, Millier began his writing career as an art critic for the Los Angeles Times, and when he retired in 1958 after 35 years with the Times, he was well known as the Dean of American Newspaper Art Critics. Millier's art output was minimal after becoming an art critic for the Los Angeles Times.

Millier was a member of the International Art Critics Association, he won the first Frank Jewett Mather Citation of the College Art Association [national], for the best newspaper art criticism in a major United States newspaper in 1954, he was co-chairman pro-tem and founding member of Art and Music Friends and the International Student Center in Westwood, California. He won many awards and prizes for his etchings, and his etchings are included in collections in the Library of Congress in Washington, the Chicago Art Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum, Pasadena Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Library and in numerous private collections. Millier has been on the art teacher’s faculties at the University of Southern California and Otis Art Institute.