The Early Years
After two blogs featuring contemporary artists whose style of work may not find favour with many who love depictions they can relate to, I have returned to a more conventional painter. William James Muller was a British figurative and landscape painter who was associated with the Bristol School, often referred to as the Bristol School of Artists, the informal association and works of a group of artists working in Bristol, England, in the early 19th century.
Muller, (or Müller) was born in Bristol on June 28th 1812 at 13 Hillsbridge Place, later becoming Hillsbridge Parade, which overlooked a man-made cut where the occasional small boat or barge would pass by. His father, John Samuel Müller, a Prussian by birth, had been born in Danzig in 1779 but in 1801 when he was twenty-two, with the continuing conflict between Prussia and France, he and some friends decided to flee the country. His method of escape was thought to be on a cargo boat carrying timber and which was plying its trade between the Baltic and Bristol. Although arriving in the British city almost penniless, his love, knowledge and achievements in natural history and geology soon found favour with members of the Philosophical and Literary Society of Bristol who took him under their wings. In 1821 William’s father published A Natural History of the Crinoidia or Lily-Shaped Animals and three years later he became the first curator of the Bristol Institution which later became the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
East Lynn, Lynmouth by Edmund Gustavus Muller
In 1806, five years after arriving in Bristol, John Samuel Muller married Margaret James who came from a well established Bristol family. In 1808 the couple had their first child, Henry who later became a country doctor. Their second born was William James who is the subject of this blog and their third and final offspring, born in 1816, was Edmund Gustavus who at first was trained to become a doctor but he, like William, became a well-known painter.
In the Vale of Llangollen by James Baker Pyne (1840)
William James Muller was initially home-educated by his mother. In 1824, when he was twelve years old he began to be involved in his father’s work at the Bristol Institution sketching some of the establishment’s discoveries and would provide illustrations which then accompanied his father’s lectures. In that same year, the Bristol Institution began to hold art exhibitions which young William Muller would have witnessed. In 1827, when he was just sixteen years of age, his father had him apprenticed to the Bristol landscape painter James Baker Pyne whose works often depicted local views as well as imaginary ones.
Falls on the River Lledr by William Muller (1830)
William Muller completed his apprenticeship with James Pyne in 1829. The abrupt end to the apprenticeship came when William’s father complained to Pyne with regards how he was giving his son menial tasks to complete such as brush cleaning instead of teaching him artistic techniques. Pyne responded by telling John Muller that he could break his son’s apprenticeship agreement if he wanted to and Muller Senior did just that ! Although it is thought that Pyne’s work did not influence Muller work greatly William did learn to appreciate the Old Masters especially the works of the seventeenth century painters such as Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin.
Classical Landscape by William Muller (1828)
The early termination of the agreement between Pyne and Muller did not put a barrier between them in later years and they always spoke about each other with a complimentary tone. In 1843 Muller wrote to a friend about Pyne saying:
“…In early life placed under the direction of my friend J. B. Pyne — nay, serving a regular apprenticeship to the arts with him, to whom I owe so much — I commenced painting in earnest…”
Landscape with Figures by William Muller
On May 25th 1830, William’s father died, aged 51. As he had been the sole family earner, the family would have struggled financially but this was avoided when the Bristol Institution agreed to buy John Muller’s extensive natural history collection for the sum of seven hundred and thirty pounds. John Muller had brought up his sons to appreciate and love nature and the natural world and William never forgot his father’s words. In a letter of 1843, William wrote:
“…Travel to me affords two pleasures—my love of botany, and natural history in general (for I cannot forget the impressions given me by my father, to whose acquirements as a man of science his works testify better than aught I can say). I continue to combine them as much as possible with my profession; a new flower often delights me as much as a new sketch…”
Waterfall by William Muller (c.1830)
The executor of William’s father’s will was the Right Reverend Dr. Beeke of Bristol Cathedral and it was he who commissioned William Muller to complete a painting of St Mary Redcliffe church and on completion he paid William £25. The curate of the church was Reverend James Bulwer, an amateur artist and naturalist who was a good friend of the artist, John Sell Cotman and he and William Muller helped the formation of the first art exhibition of the Bristol Society of Artists at the Bristol Institution in 1832. He and William each presented eight of their paintings at the exhibition.
Font at Walsingham Church by William Muller (1831)
In the early part of 1831 Muller travelled to Norfolk and Suffolk and stayed with various clergymen during his two-month travels. One of the paintings he completed during his trip was entitled The Font in Walsingham Church, although he probably completed the work once home in his studio, using sketches he made at the time.
Muller may have got the idea for his painting on seeing the illustration of the font in Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk by John Sell Cotman, dated 1818.
Trees, Suffolk by William Muller (1831)
During this period William Muller completed a number of largely monochrome watercolours such as Trees, Suffolk which he had sketched whilst visiting the Suffolk town of Lackford.
Fourteen Star Inn by William Muller (c.1832)
Another was of the Fourteen Star coaching inn.
In the second part of the blog looking at the life and works of William James Muller we will see how bloody riots and Mediterranean travel featured in his short life.
my daily art display 