Rare. We have traced only one other example in the Bristol Records Office (which includes the text of the lecture it was intended to accompany in October 1825).
A fine lithographic illustration of the fossilised remains of an Irish Giant Elk produced by the young William James Müller (1812-1845) and most likely intended to be used by his father at his lectures at the Bristol Institution.
“When Müller was thirteen years old he made a life-size drawing, copied from a lithograph of a specimen in Dublin, of this skeleton of a great Irish Elk. It was drawn on calico and used by his father to illustrate a lecture given in October 1825 at the Bristol Institution. Müller then produced his own lithograph which he may well have drawn onto the stone himself…Müller helped several lecturers by making large studies ’of bones, skeletons, and large fossils, drawn with a vigorous outline, and filled in and shaded with lamp-black” (Francis Greenacre and Sheena Stoddard, W. J. Müller 1812-1845 (1991) p.56)
Müller was the son of Johann Samuel Müller (Anglicised to Miller) (1779-1830) who was born in Danzig but who settled in Bristol in 1801 and was appointed curator of the Bristol Institution in 1823.
“He [Johann Samuel] was interested in a range of natural history topics including geology, botany, and conchology, and published a number of scientific papers, including descriptions of newly discovered species of British molluscs and, most importantly, the pioneering study A Natural History of the Crinoidea (1821). He received considerable encouragement and support from many of his contemporaries, including the geologists William Buckland, William Daniel Conybeare, and Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche.” (ODNB)
His son - William James - was educated at home by his Mother and would later be most famous (in his short life) as a landscape painter. In his early years though he is thought to have assisted his Father at his lectures and, according to the ODNB:
“By the age of twelve his drawing of a mummy-case had excited much admiration from the committee of the Bristol Institution and in 1825 the pioneer anthropologist J. C. Pritchard presented him with a paintbox for a drawing done to illustrate one of Pritchard’s lectures. In the same year he illustrated W. D. Conybeare’s lectures on the exciting fossil-finds at Lyme Regis in Dorset, many recently collected by Müller’s father.”
