Joachim Miller 1900 (WPA)

 

Peter Van Valkenburgh

  1870 - 1955 (biography)

1939  

lithograph 

14 x 9 1/2" image 

artist's pencil chop in lower right 

about 28 impressions 

dated 1939 under the signature on the matrix 

WPA Graphics Achenbach Collection 65.37.951 

ivory wove Warren's Oldstyle 

published 

California Federal Art Project WPA 

AFAE206 

SOLD

Joachim Miller, born Cincinnatus Miller on September 8, 1837, in Indiana. He was an American author and poet, as well as a colorful character who adopted the pen name Joachim after the legendary bandit, Joachim Murietta. His Quaker family settled in the territory of Oregon in 1852 but Miller left home for the California gold fields while still a youth. His life story seems to be woven with fabrications but he mined gold, worked for the Pony Express, and tangled with the law. Miller returned to Oregon where he went to college and studied law. He left for England in 1870 and his first book, Song of the Sierras, was published in 1871. He returned to the United States, and in 1883 he built a cabin for writing north of Washington, D.C. The secluded, wooded location was then known as Arlington Heights and today is in known as Malcolm X Park. In 1893, Miller headed west and built another writing cabin in the Oakland hills in northern California. He became known as the Poet of the Sierras, and died on February 17, 1913.