A wooded landscape with a windmill and a figure on a track

William James Müller was born in Bristol to Johann Samuel Miller (formerly Müller) (1779-1830), the first curator of the Bristol Institution, and his wife, Margaret James (d.1836) of Bristol. In 1827 the precocious young artist was apprenticed to the Bristol artist James Baker Pyne, but it was Müller's friendship with James Bulwer, Curate of St. Mary Redcliffe, that would be of greater artistic influence. Bulwer's collection of over a hundred drawings by the Norwich School painter John Sell Cotman, no doubt inspired Müller to visit Norfolk and Suffolk in early 1830. The present work, painted in 1838, is likely to depict a Norfolk windmill, a subject he painted several times. It was in September of the same year that Müller travelled to Greece and Egypt, where he developed his fascination for the Orient.