Auguste Millière (27 June 1820 – 26 December 1908) was a French-born painter who later became British and worked in London during the second half of the nineteenth century. He is known for several portrait paintings after earlier works and photographs, including portraits of Thomas Paine and Jacques Offenbach.
Biography Auguste Millière was born in Paris in 1820.Archives de Paris, 5Mi1 216, view 24/49, reconstructed record based on a register from Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. He was the son of Claude Millière, described as “hairdresser to the King and to Monseigneur the Dauphin”,Bazar Parisien, sixth year, 1826, pp. 147–148. and Marie-Victoire Thillier.
On 13 July 1873 in London, Auguste Millière married Rebecca Amy Bryanashwell, a dressmaker.https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/, volume 1B page 113. The couple lived in Enfield, in north London. By the 1881 United Kingdom census he was recorded as an “artist painter”, born in France and naturalised as a British subject.https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ He died on 26 December 1908 in London at the retirement home “The Haven of Rest”.https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/, volume 2C, page 235.
Works
Oil portrait of Thomas Paine, c. 1876, after an engraving by William Sharp, itself based on a portrait by George Romney. The work is now held in storage at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Oil portrait of Jacques Offenbach, c. 1881,https://www.artwarefineart.com/gallery/portrait-jacques-offenbach-1819-1880-composer-cellist-and-impresarioThe work is sometimes mistakenly attributed to (1871–1946), who would have been only ten years old at the time. after a photograph by Nadar. Portrait of the Reverend C. E. J. Carter, painted in 1898 from a photograph for the new parish hall of St James’s Church in the Enfield district of London.https://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, The Middlesex Gazette, Saturday 22 January 1898, page 5/8. Oil portrait of a young girl,The work is sometimes mistakenly attributed to (1871–1946). painted before 1889, after the original by Jean-Baptiste Greuze then held at the National Gallery, London.
Reception Contemporary newspapers mention Millière’s work. In 1898, The Middlesex Gazette reported on the unveiling of a portrait of the Reverend C. E. J. Carter painted by Millière:
Notes and references Notes
References
Further reading Sébastien Delprat, Offenbach in Full Color, translated by Donald Fox, in The Jacques Offenbach Society Newsletter, No. 114, December 2025, pp. 9–18.