Portrait of Leslie W. Miller

Portrait of Leslie W. Miller is a 1901 painting by Thomas Eakins, Goodrich catalogue #348. It is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Professor Leslie William Miller (August 5, 1848 – March 7, 1931) was an artist, educator, and principal of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art for forty years, 1880–1920. He was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He graduated from the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art) in 1874, and worked as a portrait painter. He returned to MNAS to teach, and completed a second degree in 1880.

The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA) had been chartered in 1876, and was housed in Memorial Hall, the art gallery from the 1876 Centennial Exposition. The school began classes in Fall 1777, in a building at 312 North Broad Street, and soon expanded into the old Franklin Institute (now the Philadelphia History Museum), at 15 South 7th Street. Miller came to Philadelphia in Summer 1880 as PMSIA's first principal, at the same time that Eakins was teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Miller registered for PAFA's life classes in February 1881. Colleagues in Philadelphia's artistic circles, Eakins and Miller became close friends. Miller was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and was a founder of the Art Club of Philadelphia. As secretary of the Fairmount Park Art Association (1900–20), he was involved in public art decisions for the City, including the layout of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the design of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was an honorary member of Philadelphia's T-Square Club, and of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects.