Born in Staindrop, County Durham, England, he was a portrait and landscape painter, especially appreciated for watercolor painting, which he sold through the American Art Union. Although he painted in the same locations as the Hudson River School painters, he is not considered a part of that group that strove for dramatic effect because his work is more intimate and story-telling in intent.

He became an accomplished painter as a young man, taking his first art training from his father, Joseph, an animal and landscape painter. Miller practiced by sketching the townspeople. One of these portraits attracted the attention of an unknown patron who sent Miller to London to further his studies. By 1845 he had emigrated to the United States...