William Edwards Millner was born on 4th May 1849.
William started his career as a draper; his father, also called William, had a shop in the Market Place. At some point, William decided to become a professional artist and art teacher.
He’d already had success with his work being exhibited at Birmingham in an exhibition for modern artists in 1844.
In the same year, several art publications mentioned him, one saying he was: “A young man who is becoming an artist of great promise, and we trust his efforts will be crowned with success; his paintings are highly spoken of in the art world.”
The following year, he exhibited two paintings: “The Woodcutter” and “Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton at Mermaids Fountain” at the British Institution in London.
William is considered a Victorian Genre artist. These artists often painted real life, with figures in their paintings that lacked identity or story. William also painted classical subjects.
The Friends of the Old Hall newsletter published an article about William in January 2023. It describes William’s work as: “Delicately handled and sensitive in feeling, Millner’s pictures clearly show Pre-Raphaelite influence, and might be described as ‘vernacular’ and, for their date, somewhat old-fashioned expressions of the idiom.
Such pictures would normally be expected to date from the 1850s, when the walls of the Royal Academy were peppered with painstaking works by young artists inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and their champion, John Ruskin. That Millner was still practising this style some fifteen years later suggests how long it took for metropolitan values to penetrate to rural Lincolnshire.”
In 1847, the Gainsborough Art Union held a draw, with prizes including 15 of William’s oil paintings and 40 engravings. In 1849, William’s painting “An Old Woman Knitting” was exhibited in London and then bought by Lord Boston. He commissioned a companion painting: “An Old Rustic Reading A Newspaper & Smoking a Pipe.”
William’s paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery, London. Gainsborough Old Hall also has nine of his paintings.
William died from a severe cold, and his death was reported in the local paper, part of which says: “His studies of the lion from the zoological gardens and travelling menageries were painstaking and forcible, and his last and perhaps his best picture is a striking portrayal of ‘A Christian Martyr in the Zenith of Rome’s Glory”.
In 1969, the Tate Gallery bought “A Wayside Gossip” from Christie’s, the auction house and asked for any more of his work.
Sadly, no photograph or image of William Edwards Millner has survived.
With thanks to Paul Kemp and Paul Howitt-Cowan (Friends of the Old Hall) for allowing us to use their research.
