[1][2] His early works were influenced by the paintings of his friend Albert Pinkham Ryder, and depict figures in phantasmagorical landscapes.

[3] The art historian M. Sue Kendall says: "In their classical poses and formalized compositions, Miller’s shoppers become ovoid and columnar forms in cloche hats and chokers, a study of geometricized volumes in space trying to inhabit a single shallow picture plane.

[4] Although he used traditional methods and was hostile to artistic modernism, Miller believed that good art is always radical in nature.

[3] His students include: Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Isabel Bishop, Arnold Blanch, Patrick Henry Bruce, Minna Citron, John McCrady, Thelma Cudlipp, Horace Day, Dorothy Eaton, Arnold Friedman, Lloyd Goodrich, Josephine Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi,[6] Anne Kutka McCosh, Emma Fordyce MacRae, Edward Middleton Manigault, Reginald Marsh, George L.K.

Morris,[7] Walter Tandy Murch, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck, George Tooker, Russel Wright, Albert Pels, William C. Palmer, Molly Luce,[8] and Helen Winslow Durkee.