George Miller, attributed to Mungo Burton
George Miller of Dunbar established East Lothian’s first printing press in 1795. He built a considerable trade in bookselling and publishing in both Dunbar and Haddington, and used his press to pursue his interests in the social condition of the county. Many of his projects were promising, but perhaps ahead of their time; they are recorded in a volume of autobiography ‘Latter Struggles in the Journey of Life’.
This is an oil portrait on a stretched canvas. The subject is a seated male figure wearing a coat and white shirt with a high collar. The sitter faces oblique right and holds a book above a red covered table. The background is buff coloured.
Miller campaigned for the introduction of ‘improving literature’ to replace cheap, scandalous chapbooks circulating in the early nineteenth century and was also the moving hand in a scheme to provide a lifeboat for East Lothian, a venture that came to fruition in 1808 when a Greathead Original was purchased from South Shields and stationed at Dunbar.
Museum id no. 1998.40.1
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