Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Milles

Jeremiah Milles (1714-84)

Antiquary; educated at Eton and Oxford; travelled in Europe, 1733-37; held treasureship of Lismore Cathedral, 1735-45; precentor of Waterford, 1737-44; FSA, 1741; FRS, 1742; member of the Egyptian Club; married Edith, daughter of John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1745, and held from 1746, among various preferments, St Edmund the King with St Nicholas Acons, in the City of London; DD, precentor and prebendary of Exeter, 1747, dean, 1762; president of the Society of Antiquaries, 1768-84; many of his MSS including descriptive accounts of his travels are now in the British Museum.

4590 By John Downman, 1785
Pencil and chalks on paper, 8 7/8 x 7 ½ in. (225 x 190 mm) maximum, edges irregular; profile; hazel eye, thick black eyebrows, straight nose, pink complexion, double chin, thick light-grey wig; grey coat and apron; background with rooftops and twin towers of Exeter Cathedral, lower right.

Inscribed on window frame (or column): J.D. / 1785;rectangular paper mount with oval window and border of grey wash approximately ¾ in. deep; the paper, once white, is apparently coeval with the drawing; No 1 inscribed in pencil on the mount, bottom right; a stencil SS6JT/Z/481 was on the back of the frame and a sale catalogue cutting, now removed, identified the portrait and a drawing of the sitter's wife as lot 64.

NPG 4590 is probably a very free derivative of the portrait by Nathaniel Dance. No direct source, however, has been traced and no other versions are known. Nor is Milles represented among the Downman drawings acquired by the British Museum in 1936. Since there is no reason to suppose that the date is a later addition to an existing drawing, the portrait may be regarded as posthumous. It appears to have been a companion to the drawing of his wife, signed and dated 1780, both at Christie's, 4 December 1957, lot 16. Mrs Milles died in 1761. It is possible that both portraits were drawn for members of their large family, perhaps for the eldest son Jeremiah (1751-97) whose portrait by Romney is now in the Henry E. Huntington Library, USA. [1]

Condition: some yellowing; cleaned and mounted, 1972, when an extension to the paper was removed, also a backing paper watermarked PRO PATRIA / BAND & SON. [2]

Collections: bought, 1967, through Colnaghi's, the purchasers at Sotheby's, 23 November 1967, lot 56; previously at Sotheby's, 4 December 1957, lot 16, anonymous vendor.

Iconography

Milles appears to have sat only to Nathaniel Dance. [3] His head and shoulders portraitand a similar bust by John Bacon [4] dated 1785 were presented to the Society of Antiquaries by Major General Thomas Milles in 1883. They also possess an oil lent by the Society to the 'NPE', 1867 (432), a copy by a Miss Black. A monument of the sitter and his wife by Bacon is in the Church of St Edmund the King.

Notes

1. C.H. Collins Baker, Catalogue of the British Paintings in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1936, pp.90-91, pl.xliii.
2. W.A. Churchill, Watermarks in Paper, 1935 (145), pl.cx.
3. SSB, LXIV, p.1, LXIX, p.78; reproduced The Ancestor, IV, 1903, p.202.
4. Exh. 'British Portraits', RA, 1956/57 (287).