Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Miller, John (1715?-1790?)
MILLER, JOHN, otherwise Johann Sebastian Müller (1715?–1790?), draughtsman and engraver, was born at Nuremberg about 1715, and studied there under J. C. Weigel and M. Tyroff. In 1744 he came to England with his brother Tobias, an engraver of architecture, and he passed the remainder of his life in this country, chiefly practising as an engraver. He signed his early works J. S. Müller or J. S. Miller, but after 1760 used the signature of John Miller. In 1759 and 1760 he was living in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden; in 1777 in Dorset Court, near Parliament Street; and in 1789 at 10 Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth.
In the preface to his ‘Illustration of the Sexual System’ Müller speaks of his own ‘early inclination to Botany,’ and ‘desire of rendering his Profession as an Engraver subservient to the Cultivation of his favourite Science;’ but though most of his work is faithful to nature and artistically excellent, Philip Miller [q. v.], Dr. Gowan Knight [q. v.], and Lord Bute are probably largely responsible for its scientific supervision. On 31 March 1759 he issued ‘Proposals for publishing one hundred prints, exhibiting a curious Collection of Plants and Insects by John Miller … Each Print will contain a Plant coloured from Nature, with the peculiar Insects which feed on [it] … The Plants will be classed under their proper Genera, according to the Botanick System of Mr. Miller of Chelsea (who has generously offered his kind assistance). … The Insects will be ranged as by Dr. Linnæus in his Systema Naturæ … This work will be published in Fifty Numbers, one … every Month. Each Number will contain Two … plates, with a half-sheet of letter-press, … Price Five Shillings. The first number on 10 May … If the Proprietor meets with Encouragement … he proposes to go through the whole Animal Creation according to the System adapted by Dr. Linnæus.’ Of this work, equal if not superior to the previously published ‘Plantæ et Papiliones’ of Ehret, only ten folio plates were published, with the letter-press to the first eight, the plates bearing date between May 1759 and April 1760.
Richard Weston, in his ‘Catalogue of English Authors on Agriculture’ (1773), notes, under 1770, that Miller then published ‘No. 1’ of his ‘System of Linnæus explained … To be compleated in 15 Numbers, one Guinea each. Each Number contains 4 plants coloured and 4 plain.’ John Ellis wrote to Linnæus of this undertaking on 28 Dec. 1770, ‘There is a valuable work now carrying on upon your system by Mr. John Miller, a German painter and engraver, under the direction of Dr. Gowan Knight, of the British Museum. This will make your system of botany familiar to the ladies, being in English as well as Latin. The figures are well drawn, and very systematically dissected and described. I have desired that he may send to your ambassador for you the two first numbers to know your opinion of it, and if you approve you may get him subscriptions’ (Correspondence of Linnæus, i. 255). The plates are dated from 1771 to 1776, and in 1777 the work was issued complete in three volumes folio, containing 108 coloured plates, 104 uncoloured, and 109 sheets of letter-press in Latin and English, ‘published and sold by the author.’ The English title was ‘An Illustration of the Sexual System of the Genera Plantarum of Linnæus.’ A list of eighty-two subscribers, taking about 125 copies, and including the name of David Garrick, is prefixed, and in the preface are given four letters to the author from Linnæus, in one of which he writes, ‘Donum tuum operis immortalis chariori veniet pretio quam, ut id remunerare valeam. Figuræ enim sunt et pulchriores et accuratiores quam ullæ quas vidit mundus a condito orbe.’ In Linnæus's own copy of the work, now in the Linnean Society's library, in that in the King's library (36 i. 1–3), in the Banksian copy, at the Natural History Museum, and in that at Kew, formerly belonging to James Lee of the Vineyard, Hammersmith, some plates are proofs before letters.
In 1779 Miller published an octavo edition of the ‘Illustration,’ with 107 uncoloured plates and a preface containing a letter of encouragement from the younger Linnæus, and promising a second volume to exhibit specific characters. This second volume was not issued until 1789, the delay being stated in the preface to be due to ‘a particular engagement.’ It is entitled ‘An Illustration of the Termini Botanici of Linnæus,’ and contains eighty-six uncoloured plates. New title-pages for the folio edition and the first volume of the octavo edition of the ‘Illustration’ seem to have been issued subsequently, copies at the Natural History Museum bearing the imprint, ‘Printed for Robert Faulder, New Bond Street, 1794.’ The ‘Illustration’ was published in German in folio by Konrad Felsing, Darmstadt, 1792, and at Frankfurt-on-Maine, 1804, both coloured; the octavo edition, by Dr. F. G. Weiss, at Frankfurt in 1789, with the plates of the first volume, re-engraved by Charles Goepfert and coloured, in a separate volume, entitled ‘Johannis Milleri Tabulæ Iconum centum quatuor plantarum ad illustrationem systematis sexualis Linnæani.’
Meanwhile Miller attempted another ambitious work dealing with new plants. Of this seven folio plates, dated 1780, were published, with a half-sheet of letter-press, but no title. In the botanical department of the Natural History Museum are five volumes, including in all 1072 original coloured drawings, with the manuscript title, ‘Drawings of the Leaves, Stalks, and Ramifications of Plants for the purpose of ascertaining their several Species, executed for the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Bute, for the years 1783 and 1784, by John Miller, Author of the Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnæus.’ These drawings were not utilised in Lord Bute's great work, ‘Botanical Tables’ (1785); but all the plates in the nine volumes of that work are also signed by Miller.
Miller engraved numerous plates other than botanic from his own designs; they are somewhat feeble in drawing and treatment, but his plates from compositions by good masters have much merit. To the former class belong ‘The Ladies' Lesson,’ 1755; frontispiece to Smollett's ‘History of England,’ 1758; ticket for the marriage of George III, 1761; the Oxford Almanacks for 1763–1765; ‘The Passions Personifyed in Familiar Fables;’ ‘Morning,’ a domestic interior, 1766; and ‘The Confirmation of Magna Carta by Henry III,’ 1780. Of Miller's engravings after other artists, the most important are the plates to Gray's ‘Poems,’ after R. Bentley, 1753; twelve plates to Milton's ‘Paradise Lost,’ after Hayman; ‘Apollo and Marsyas,’ after Claude; ‘Moonlight,’ after A. van der Neer, 1766; four plates of Roman monuments, after Pannini; ‘The Continence of Scipio,’ after Vandyck; ‘Writing the Billet,’ after Pantoja de la Cruz; ‘The Repose in Egypt,’ after Murillo; and a ‘Holy Family,’ after Barocci. From Miller's own statement, made in a letter to Van Murr, it appears that the originals of the three last-mentioned prints were painted by himself, and that he sold them to English connoisseurs as genuine works of the masters. Miller produced some excellent prints of antiquities, including four views of the temples at Pæstum, 1767; the whole of the plates in ‘Marmora Oxoniensia,’ a work on the Arundelian marbles, with text by Chandler, 1763; and several of those in L. Natter's ‘Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones,’ 1754. He also engraved portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte, Peter Collinson, F.R.S., John Wilkes, George Edwards the naturalist, after Dandridge; Thomas Gray the poet, after Eccardt (intended to form the frontispiece to his ‘Poems,’ 1753, but suppressed); and some of those in Smollett's ‘History.’ He engraved in mezzotint a portrait of William Barrowby, M.D., after F. Hayman. Furthermore he painted landscapes, which, as well as some of his engravings, he exhibited with the Society of Arts and at the Royal Academy from 1762 to 1788. Though the date of his death is unknown, it was probably soon after 1789, and almost certainly before 1794.
Miller engraved his own portrait with that of Linnæus on the frontispiece of his ‘Illustration of the Sexual System,’ 1777.
He was twice married, and had in all twenty-seven children, two of his sons, John Frederick and James Müller or Miller, becoming known as draughtsmen, and as frequent exhibitors of topographical views at the Society of Artists. The former accompanied Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander to Ireland in 1772 as a draughtsman, and published in numbers in 1785 ‘Various Subjects of Natural History wherein are delineated Birds, Animals, and many curious Plants: with the parts of fructification of each plant, all of which are drawn and coloured from Nature,’ London, imp. fol.
[Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon; Mason's Memoirs of Gray, 1814, i. 335; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 38403); Universal Catalogue of Books on Art; Catalogues of the Society of Artists; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers; Miller's own works.]