Frank Miles

George Francis "Frank" Miles (22 April 1852 – 15 July 1891) was a London-based British artist who specialised in pastel portraits of society ladies, also an architect and a keen plantsman. He was artist in chief to the magazine Life. He contributed text and botanical illustrations to the weekly journal "The Garden" between 1877 and 1887.

He was the son of the Rev. Robert Henry William Miles (1818–1883), rector of the Church of St. Mary and All Angels, Bingham, Nottinghamshire, and his wife Mary Cleaver. He was the grandson of Philip John Miles (1773–1845) by his second marriage to Clarissa Peach (1790–1868). Philip John Miles was an English landowner, banker, merchant, politician and collector, who was elected MP for Bristol from 1835–37 having earlier been elected for Westbury from 1820–26 and Corfe Castle from 1829–32. Frank Miles was therefore brother of Charles Oswald Miles, cousin of Philip Napier Miles and half-cousin of Sir Philip Miles, 2nd Baronet.

Today, Frank Miles is best known for being a friend (and many believe a lover) of Oscar Wilde whom he met at Oxford in 1874 or 1875, where Miles had family connections to the colleges and friends, but was never an undergraduate after being schooled at home (rather than at Eton as his father and uncles were). Miles introduced Wilde to Lillie Langtry, and to his friend and patron Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, who later became the model for the worldly Lord Henry Wotton in Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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