Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/285

 took a tour in Greece and Egypt, returning to Bristol with portfolios well filled with sketches. In 1839 he came to London, where his pictures found ready purchasers. His dexterity in the use of both oil- and water-colour, his fine colour, and extraordinarily rapid execution, were regarded with admiration and wonder. [q. v.], his senior by nearly thirty years, who wished to improve himself in oil painting, came and watched the young genius as he painted his now famous picture of ‘The Ammunition Waggon,’ and procured a few of his pictures to place before him as models to work by. He again exhibited at the Royal Academy, and continued to do so yearly till his death. In 1841 he published a volume of ‘Sketches illustrative of the Age of Francis I’ (dedicated to Queen Adelaide), and joined the government expedition to Lycia at his own expense. During his absence he made a large number of masterly sketches, and from them he painted several pictures, like ‘The Tent Scene, Xanthus,’ and ‘The Burial Ground, Smyrna,’ which were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution during the last three years of his life.

His hands were now full of commissions, which he was unable to execute from ill-health. He returned to Bristol for rest and advice, but his heart was diseased. He painted occasionally, his last work being a sketch in water-colour of some flowers at his bedside. He died on 8 Sept. 1845, at the early age of thirty-three, and was buried in the old Lewin's Mead burial-ground, Bristol. At the sale of his works, which took place the year after his death, there was much competition for his Lycian sketches, which sold at prices varying from 20l. to 60l. apiece. A fine collection of them was left to the British Museum by [q. v.] in 1878. His oil-pictures now sell for very large sums. The ‘Chess Players’ fetched 4,052l. at J. Heugh's sale in 1874; ‘Ancient Tombs, Lycia,’ 3,950l. at the Bolckow sale in 1888; and ‘The Island of Rhodes,’ 3,465l. at C. P. Matthews's sale in 1891. He is represented in the National Gallery by two fine but comparatively unimportant works—a ‘Welsh Landscape’ and an Eastern sketch (in oils), with figures. There are several of his water-colour drawings in the South Kensington Museum. Müller was one of the most original and powerful of painters from nature. He seized the characteristics of a scene with wonderful clearness and promptitude, and set it down without hesitation or difficulty. His selection and generalisation were nearly always masterly, his colour pure and strong, and he could probably suggest more, with fewer touches, than any other painter of his time. He never spoilt the freshness of his work by over-labour or detail. One of his most remarkable works, executed very rapidly, in a manner suggestive of Constable, and called ‘Eel Butts at Goring,’ is now in the possession of Mr. William Agnew. It is little more than a masterly sketch, and on the back of it is written in large letters by the artist himself, ‘Left as a sketch for some fool to finish and ruin, W. M., Feb. 7, 1843.’ It has recently been engraved in mezzotint on a large scale. Facsimiles of twenty of his Bristol sketches were published in a quarto volume under the title ‘Bits of Old Bristol,’ Bristol, 1883.

A portrait of Müller from a drawing by Mr. Branwhite of Bristol is prefixed to Solly's ‘Life of Müller,’ and a photograph of a bust in the possession of Muller's brother Edmund is given in the same work.



MULLINER, THOMAS (fl. 1550?), musician, was before 1559, according to a manuscript note in Stafford Smith's handwriting, ' master of St. Paul's school,' that is, of the school for the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral. In 1559 Sebastian Westcott was appointed to the post. If Stafford Smith's note, which is the only evidence of Mulliner's connection with the cathedral, be correct, Mulliner was the master of Tallis and Sheppard, and deserves the credit of maintaining the St. Paul's music-school at a high level of excellence, if not of having raised it to celebrity.

Mulliner made a valuable collection of pieces for the virginals, which is now preserved in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 30513. The volume bears an inscription, 'Sum liber Thomas Mullineri, Johanne Heywoode teste.' (Heywood was much employed as a musician about the court.) Most of the music in this collection is written for the virginals, in the hand, it is supposed, of Mulliner; while certain numbers, 'galliardes,' are signed T. M. The manuscript was probably written during the reign of Mary or early in that of Elizabeth; it has been judged by other authorities to belong to Henry VIII's time.

One Thomas Mulliner was scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in and before 1564, and 'organorum modulator 'on 3 March 1563-4. The name of Mulliner, or Mullyner, was known in the 16th century in Suffolk (Cal. Chanc. Proc. ii. 398),