The Brief Presence of Robert Muller To look at the surviving record of Robert Muller is to encounter a shadow in the history of British painting. Born in London in 1773, his career was a sudden, brief flash that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. He was active between 1789 and 1800, a period of intense artistic production in the United Kingdom, yet his personal biography remains largely unwritten. We know him through his output rather than his life story. He was a painter who operated during a specific window of time, leaving behind a footprint that is defined more by the scarcity of…