James Miller Huggins

A marine painter and etcher, James Miller Huggins was the son of William John Huggins, Marine Painter to William IV. The family’s living came out of the eastern trade: the elder Huggins had sailed as an ordinary seaman to Bombay and China aboard the East Indiaman Perseverance between 1812 and 1814, drawing ships along the way, and afterwards was specially employed to paint the vessels of the East India Company. He took the royal appointment in 1830. The son had grown up in Leadenhall Street, beside the East India Company’s headquarters, where he trained under his father and made engravings after his work, as did his brother, John W. Huggins, who likewise etched after their father’s shipping portraits; by 1830 he had moved from the family home to Stepney.

He exhibited rarely, four times at the Society of British Artists from 1826 and once at the British Institution in 1842; his marine subjects are now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Among them are ship portraits in the manner learned from his father, such as ‘The Indiaman Thomas Coutts’ and ‘The Ship Matilda and Cutter Zephyr’, works that place him within the family trade of shipping pictures rather than the topography of distant coasts.

Whether Huggins himself ever reached Ceylon is not recorded. His ‘View in Ceylon with Soldiers and Natives on a Road’ is now in the British Government Art Collection. The Collection holds it as an oil on canvas and hangs it at the British High Commission in Colombo, so that the painting now looks out upon the island it depicts, whether or not its maker ever stood there. How a painter who worked chiefly on the Thames came to record a Ceylon road the record does not explain; the family’s long service to the East India trade offers the likeliest thread.

Sources

1. Talwatte, Malaka. ‘19th Century Views of Ceylon by British Artists’.
2. British Government Art Collection.
3. National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.