Lot 144: William Edward Millner (1849-1895)

Labourers
signed with initials 'W.E.M.' (lower left) and further signed and inscribed 'W.E.Millner Spital Terrace Gainsborough No.2 Labourers...' (on an old label on the reverse) and signed again 'No.2 Labourers WE Millner' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
30 1/8 x 40 1/4 in. (76.5 x 102.2 cm.)

London, Royal Academy, 1885, no. 1103.

George L. Graziado, Jun. (1919-2002), founder of the Imperial Bank of California.

A painter of rustic genre and animals, especially horses, Millner lived all his life in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; the Gainsborough Old Hall Museum still houses many of his works. He is represented in Tate Britain by A Wayside Gossip (1872), which is Pre-Raphaelite in technique, being painted with painstaking detail. Labourers is executed in a softer, looser style, and in its quiet evocation of a working day drawing to a close, demonstrates a greater affiliation with the progressive school of social realism that flourished during the 1880s.

This picture was formerly part of the collection of entrepreneur George L. Graziado, founder of the Imperial Bank of California and recepient of many accolades including the prestigious Horatio Alger Award (2002).

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.