Engineer's blacksmith

The blacksmith is an enduring image of strength and humility: a working man devoted to a skilled yet humble trade. He is the sculptor as artisan. At the time the Museum acquired this relief, Felix Martin Miller (1843-1923) taught modelling in London at the National Art School, South Kensington. He exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1842 and 1880, and at the British Institution between 1847 and 1866. The leading mid-Victorian sculptor John Henry Foley thought so well of Miller that he commissioned more than one of Miller's works in marble. Miller was active between 1842 and 1880. Mentioned in the obituary of the sculptor Henry Foley in the 'Art Journal' of 1874, Miller was described as 'one of the few sculptors whose genius is manifest and who has produced works, chiefly bas-reliefs, that are unsurpassed by any production of their class in modern Art: Foley thought so well of Miller that he commissioned more than one of his works in marble: indeed the great artist was the principal patron of his struggling brother-artist'.