Ferguson was also a local historian, author and President of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society and editor of its transactions.
[2] It was Millard's godfather, the one time secretary to John Ruskin, the art critic and political economist, W. G. Collingwood who first taught him to draw.
[2] At the age of 23 he won the Royal Academy Gold Medal and the Travelling Scholarship for painting.
In 1928, he was elected member of the Royal Society of British Artists and shortly afterwards he began to exhibit his work in London and overseas.
Towards the end of the 1920s he taught at the Richmond School of Art, where he met and shared a studio with John Piper.
He held that position until 1950 when he became headmaster of Polytechnic School of Art, Regent Street, London.