American Art Collaborative

Miller often used witty captions or lines of dialogue to reveal more about the characters in his sketches. He provided the following caption for this piece: "You must move on 'old bottle nose' - the city won't pay you anything for holding up the lamp post." Alfred Jacob Miller was a prolific sketcher. He filled many journals with drawings and captions from the time he was studying in Paris and Rome (1833) until the 1870's. The varied interests of Miller are clearly reflected in these sketches: rural sites, studies after Old Master paintings, illustrations of literature, and comical scenes and characters. This sketch comes from the family album of L. Vernon Miller, which contains works that have passed down through the Miller family directly from the artist.