William James Müller (1812–1845) was the best-known landscape painter of the Bristol School, an early 19th-century group of artists working in the city which included Francis Danby, Edward Bird and John Baker Pyne amongst others. His father was a Prussian immigrant from Danzig, Johann Samuel Miller (formerly Müller), who became the director of the Bristol Museum.
Müller's early pictures were mostly of the scenery of Gloucestershire and Wales. His landscape style was strongly influenced by his study of masters such as Claude and Ruysdael.
The young Müller travelled to Italy in 1834–5 with his artist friend George Arthur Fripps and the sketches from this tour formed the subjects of oil paintings by Müller during the next few years. After time spent in Belgium, along the Rhine, at Frankfurt and Zurich, the pair passed into Italy, reaching Venice, where they stayed for almost two months. They then travelled on to Florence and south to Rome, before turning homeward in January 1835.
Müller's time in Italy provided rich opportunity both to study the masters in the museums of Venice and Florence and to sketch from life. It is remarked how Müller delighted in the Uffizi Palace and Palazzo Pitti, and was 'able rapidly to assimilate and make his own a good deal of what was admirable in the canvases of the great masters'. At the same time, it was drawing from life that Müller most enjoyed, with Fripps noting that 'in truth, Müller liked best those places where he sat and sketched'.
Müller also travelled widely in Greece and Egypt, where he was commissioned to execute a number of studies of architectural subjects.
Müller exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Following his death Müller's work was in great demand: through the bequest of John Henderson, many of his sketches are now housed in the British Museum.
