William Edwards Miller

William Edwards Miller FSA (24 April 1851 – 2 March 1940) was a British artist known as a society portrait painter as well as an antiquarian horological collector.

Early life

Miller was born in Florence on 24 April 1851. He was the third of six sons and two daughters born to John Miller and Harriet (née Edwards) Miller. His father, who was also an artist, was a gentleman of private means. One of his elder brothers was John Douglas Miller, who, like William, was a pupil of the Royal Academy schools, became a prominent mezzotint engraver and protégé of George Richmond. His eldest brother was Arthur William Kaye Miller, who spent 44 years at the British Museum where he became a bibliographer and was eventually appointed Keeper of Printed Books.

On his family's return to England, they settled in St Pancras, London. In 1869, he was awarded the silver medal for "Best Drawing from the Antique" from the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House.

Career

Miller began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1873, primarily with portraits and figure subjects. He exhibited regularly until 1893, then more sporadically, all portraits, in 1895, 1900, 1903 and 1909. He exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1891, as well as the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, at Birmingham Art Gallery and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, until 1909. Afterwards, his practice ran privately until .

In 1897, Miller was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of the 8-year-old George St Vincent Harris (later 5th Baron Harris), who started collecting clocks as a boy. In 1910 he made a portrait of fellow collector Lewis Evans, who endowed the History of Science Museum, Oxford in 1925. Miller gave the Oxford museum three items, including a 16h-century iron clock.

In 1915, Miller lent approximately over 150 clocks and other time pieces to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which he later bequeathed to the museum. Miller was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1923 for his horological interests. In 1934, he donated six clocks and ninety-five watches, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, to the Guildhall Museum (which today are in the collection of the Museum of London).

Portrait gallery

File:Mary Monica Maxwell-Scott (1852–1920).jpg, Mary Monica Maxwell-Scott, 1874
File:Edmund Ernest Leatham 1887.jpg, Edmund Ernest Leatham, 1887
File:William David Murray, Viscount Stormont.jpg, William David Murray, Viscount Stormont,
File:Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig.jpg, Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig, 1896
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Richard Edward Lawley (1887–1909) (painted posthumously from a photograph) - 21103 - National Trust.jpg, Richard Edward Lawley, between and
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Walter FitzUryan Rice (1873–1956), 7th Baron Dynevor - 869209 - National Trust.jpg, Walter Rice, 7th Baron Dynevor, between and
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Lowry Egerton Cole (1845–1924), 4th Earl of Enniskillen, KP - 631039 - National Trust.jpg, Lowry Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen, 1902
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Lady Marjorie Hervey (1898–1967), Later Lady Erskine - 851755 - National Trust.jpg, Lady Marjorie Hervey (later Lady Erskine), 1908
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Lady Phyllis Hervey (1899–1990), Later Lady Phyllis MacRae - 851754 - National Trust.jpg, Lady Phyllis Hervey (later Lady Phyllis MacRae), 1908
File:Archibald Kennedy, 4th Marquess of Ailsa.jpg, Archibald Kennedy, 4th Marquess of Ailsa, 1910
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - The Honourable Arthur George Child Villiers (1883–1969) - 772278 - National Trust.jpg, The Hon. Arthur George Child Villiers,
File:William Edwards Miller (c.1852-after 1929) - Piers Frederick Legh (1830–1925) - 500029 - National Trust.jpg, Piers Frederick Legh, 1917
File:Brooke Foss Westcott by WE Miller.jpg, Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham

Personal life

On 20 May 1880, he married Mary Jessie Ruth Backhouse (1846–1928) at the British Vice-Consulate and at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Boulogne-sur-Mer. She was daughter of two Camden-based artists, Henry Fleetwood Backhouse and Margaret (née Holden) Backhouse, a successful British portrait and genre painter. Mary was also an artist, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1870–1875, 1880, 1885, 1889, 1891, and in 1893.

His wife died at 3 St Petersburgh Place, Bayswater, on 11 July 1928. They had no children. He later lived with Emma Rothwell (1876–1956), a retired schoolteacher who reportedly was Miller's his adopted daughter. Miller died at 50 Weymouth Street, in the Marylebone district in the City of Westminster on 2 March 1940. Following his death, Emma gave "several wooden sculptures of religious subjects from the Miller collection to the V&A." On her death in 1956, she left the V&A a longcase clock which Miller had left her.

References

External links

William Edwards Miller (active 1873-1929), Draughtsman
at the National Portrait Gallery, London

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, William Edwards
1851 births
1940 deaths
British portrait painters
19th-century British painters
20th-century British painters
British male painters
19th-century British male artists
20th-century British male artists
Artists from the London Borough of Camden
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
People from St Pancras, London