This following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.  

HELEN DEVORE MILLER HABBERSTAD (August 5, 1892 – November 13, 1966)

A.K.A. “Helen D. Miller,” “Helen M. Habberstad”

Artist, portrait and landscape painter in oil, printmaker, designer. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, the daughter of Mary Julia Jacob (1855 – 1908) and Jay DeVore Miller (1854 – 1935), an attorney and nationally recognized expert on food legislation who served as a member of the “committee that formulated America’s national pure food laws” in the early 20th century. The family resided in Chicago and later in Geneva, Illinois.

She attended Albion and Beloit Colleges (where she met her future husband) and following her graduation from the latter in 1915 she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then later at the Church School of Art, Columbus Art School (Ohio) and the Art Students League and Grand Central School of Art, both located in New York City. Among the noted American painters with whom she studied during her career were Robert Brackman (1898 – 1980), George Pearse Ennis (1884 – 1936) and Ivan Olinsky (1878 – 1962).

She and her husband, Claude (1895 – 1970), who was a writer, newspaper editor and architect, settled in New Jersey in 1925. There, she worked alongside him where together they designed and built at least sixteen unique homes in Morris County, primarily located in Boonton, Montville and Parsippany. They became known for these houses, which were often built amongst boulders and which were set carefully into their landscapes. In addition to her work alongside her husband, Habberstad became a prominent painter and regular exhibitor in local and regional art shows. But her love of design was never far off, and in 1930 she participated in a poster contest that would help decide the cover design for the program catalog of the annual New Jersey Flower Show.

Though she and her husband traveled extensively, among Habberstad’s busiest years as a painter was the decade between 1940 and 1950. In 1941 she had a solo exhibition in Millburn which featured paintings of “Mexico and the Seminole Indian Country in Florida” which was her “first one-man show in [that] neighborhood.” The following year she received two honorable mentions at the annual New Jersey State Art Exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum and first prize at the Morristown Art Association for her painting, “Days End.” At her 1949 solo exhibition at the Paper Mill Playhouse located in Millburn, New Jersey, she exhibited paintings depicting southern themes and scenery.

At her solo figurative exhibition at “The Harbor” in Parsippany in 1952, the Rockaway Record noted that she “has a wide and excellent reputation for her ability to obtain satisfactory likeness and characteristic expressions in her quality paintings.” In a 1959 Boonton Times-Bulletin article, a local reporter commented upon Habberstad and her artistic creations: “there is nothing awesome about this quiet, charming woman. And her pictures, like her home, spill over with gentle joy—full of sunlight and gaiety and rich with clear color.” She continued to exhibit her paintings into the early 1960s.

Helen Miller Habberstad died at St. Clare’s Hospital in Denville, New Jersey on Sunday, the 13th of November 1966 at the age of seventy-four years. Her funeral was held on November 16 in Denville and her body was transported for burial in the Lanesboro Cemetery located in Lanesboro, Minnesota, where her husband had been raised.

Habberstad was a popular figure painter who completed over 100 portraits, including several for Drew University, where her husband taught at one time. She was a member of the Art Centre of the Oranges, Morristown Art Association, Mountain Lakes Art Association and the New Jersey Professional Artists League. Her paintings are most often signed “Helen Habberstad.” At least one linoleum cut created by Habberstad is known. It was used to illustrate the book, Saint Francis and the Fierce Wolf of Gubbio, published by the Golden Hind Press in 1931.

Though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which Habberstad participated, those presently known include the following: Drew University, Madison, NJ, 1938; Annual New Jersey State Art Exhibition, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, 1939, 1942 (2 prizes), 1943; Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ, 1941 (solo), 1949 (solo); New Jersey Gallery Show, Kresge Department Store, Newark, NJ, April 1941 (prize), June 1941; Woman’s Club of Morristown, Morristown, NJ, 1941 (solo); Sixty Portraits Exhibition, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, 1942; Woman’s Clubhouse, Hackensack, NJ, 1941-42 (solo); Morristown Art Association, Morristown, NJ, (1942, prize); Morris County Art Association, Morris County, NJ, 1947; The Harbor, Parsippany, NJ, 1952 (solo); Preakness Shopping Center, Wayne, NJ, 1961; Morris County Fair, Morris County, NJ, (u.d., prize);

Habberstad’s works are not currently known to be in the collection of any public institutions. Her works reside in many private collections throughout the United States.