Miller's work forms an interesting link between the British tradition of watercolor and the group of 19th-century American landscape painters known as the Hudson River School. Miller was born in England and trained by his father in watercolor from an early age. He moved to America and settled in New York and, like many American artists of the 1830s and 1840s, explored the beautiful river valleys near the city. Soon, however, the artist began to make finished watercolors meant to be framed and sold like oil paintings. This practice became more and more important as the interest in watercolor spread in this country, culminating later in the century with such masters as Winslow Homer (1836-1910).