Maler Müller was one of the group of young men in the 1770s whose critical reaction to the society and literature of the time is usually seen as forming the Sturm und Drang movement. He wished to give primacy to spontaneous feeling with an emphasis on nature and the language and manners of the people. Johann Friedrich Müller was born in Bad Kreuznach on 13 January 1749 to Johann Friedrich Müller, a baker and innkeeper, and Katharina Margaretha Roos Müller. Müller's mother died when he was young. His education at the gymnasium, which began in 1759, ended when his father died in 1763. The boy's artistic gifts were noticed by a patron of his father's inn, a businessman named Schmerz, who paid for him to go to Zweibrücken in 1765 to study art. There he became the court painter for the...