Karl L. H. Müller, a German immigrant, became one of nineteenth-century America’s most renowned porcelain designers. As a young man he studied at the Royal Academy in Paris and, following his immigration, resumed his training at the National Academy of Design in New York. Müller exhibited at New York City’s 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition, and replicas of his work were issued through the flourishing art unions. His portrait plaques of Washington and Webster date from this period. In 1874 he was hired by the Union Porcelain Works and assigned the responsibility of preparing the factory’s display for the upcoming Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. His best-known work is the pair of “Century Vases,” created specifically for the exposition, that chronicle America’s achievements over her first century.

Related examples: According to the Cosmopolitan Art Journal Müller produced companion portraits of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Twenty copies of each would be distributed among the Cosmopolitan Art Association’s membership. A similar Washington profile by Henry Kirke Brown (1814–1886) is recorded in Sack 1969–92, vol. 6, p. 1611, no. P4667.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.