Details of Sculptor

Surname

Miller

Alternative Surname

First Name

Felix Martin

Initial of Surname

M

Year of Birth/Baptism

1819 -

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Miller was born on 8 February 1819 and christened on 11 September 1822 at Folkestone, Kent, the son of Martin and Sarah Miller. He was left fatherless at an early age and was brought up at the London orphan school. He joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1842 on the recommendation of Henry Weekes, giving his address as 6 Lower Eaton Street, Pimlico. At the exhibition of works of art for the Houses of Parliament, held three years later, he showed The dying Briton and Orphans (6, 5). The Art Union reported the progress of the former work in 1844, saying that it possessed ‘no inconsiderable merit,’ and a year later described the finished piece as ‘composed of two figures, a boy and a girl, evidently all-in-all to each other. The boy holds his sister’s hand and the bearing of both forcibly tells the tale of their joint bereavement’. Miller received many enthusiastic press notices. His Spirit of the Calm was described by the Art Journal as ‘elegant’ with ‘much fancy and refined taste’ (4), and his Attendant spirit in Comus as ‘a highly poetic image’ which ‘reflects honour on the young sculptor who has so successfully executed it’ (26).
In the 1850s he lived in Bloomfield Place, Pimlico, before taking up a post as master in the modelling class at South Kensington Museum in 1860 and moving to Drayton Terrace, West Brompton. He remained in the post until at least 1880. Miller executed several monuments, modelled for Minton and Copeland, and his busts include a study of Dr Livingstone ad vivum (14). Chiefly, however, he produced bas-reliefs of poetic subjects, notably from Shakespeare. These works were apparently small in scale and intended for the domestic market: Miller described one of his models, of Titania (30), as ‘designed for a drawing room, etc’ (Graves V, 1905-6, 250). The Art Journal commented of his Ariel: ‘It is in subjects of playful and graceful imagination, like this, that Mr Miller peculiarly excels … they should be encouraged: there are many ways of using them for ornamental purposes’ (27).
His fellow sculptor and friend, J H Foley, was an ardent admirer of Miller’s sculpture and commissioned, among other works, a marble copy of Titania asleep (30). On the death of Foley, the Art Journal carried an obituary in which the author pays tribute to Miller : ‘he is one of the few sculptors whose genius is manifest and who has produced works, chiefly bas-reliefs, that are unsurpassed by any productions of their class in modern art... but whose evil fortune it has been to obtain much praise with little recompense’ (AJ, 1874, 306).
Miller exhibited at the RA for the last time in 1880, giving his address as 16 Victoria Grove, Fulham Road. His date of death is uncertain. On 16 December 1953, lot 555 in the Sotheby sale catalogue was a volume of over 500 silhouettes of wild and domestic animals by the sculptor.
EH/MGS
Literary References: ILN 26 May 1866, 512; AJ, 1874, 306; Graves 1875, 379; Graves 1905-6, 249-51; Gunnis 1968, 259-60; Morris and Roberts 1998, 427-8; Bilbey 2002, 337
Archival References: RA admissions; GPC; IGI