William Edwards Miller

William Edwards Miller (24 April 1851 – 2 March 1940) was a British artist known as a society portrait painter as well as an antiquarian horological collector.

Early life Miller was born in Florence on 24 April 1851. He was the third of six sons and two daughters born to John Miller and Harriet (née Edwards) Miller. His father, who was also an artist, was a gentleman of private means. One of his elder brothers was John Douglas Miller, who, like William, was a pupil of the Royal Academy schools, became a prominent mezzotint engraver and protégé of George Richmond. His eldest brother was Arthur William Kaye Miller, who spent 44 years at the British Museum where he became a bibliographer and was eventually appointed Keeper of Printed Books.

Career Miller began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1873, primarily with portraits and figure subjects. He exhibited regularly until 1893, then more sporadically, all portraits, in 1895, 1900, 1903 and 1909. He exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1891, as well as the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, at Birmingham Art Gallery and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, until 1909. Afterwards, his practice ran privately until .

In 1897, Miller was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of the 8-year-old George St Vincent Harris (later 5th Baron Harris), who started collecting clocks as a boy. In 1910 he made a portrait of fellow collector Lewis Evans, who endowed the History of Science Museum, Oxford in 1925. Miller gave the Oxford museum three items, including a 16h-century iron clock.

His wife died at 3 St Petersburgh Place, Bayswater, on 11 July 1928. They had no children. He later lived with Emma Rothwell (1876–1956), a retired schoolteacher who reportedly was Miller's his adopted daughter. Miller died at 50 Weymouth Street, in the Marylebone district in the City of Westminster on 2 March 1940. Following his death, Emma gave "several wooden sculptures of religious subjects from the Miller collection to the V&A." On her death in 1956, she left the V&A a longcase clock which Miller had left her.