Figurative expressionist Jan Müller was an important influence on a circle of young Abstract Expressionists working in Provincetown in the 1950s. He was well-known in his lifetime—when he died tragically at age 35, the New York Times obituary described him as “one of the leading younger American painters. He was a prolific artist despite having a career cut short, and was known for a raw, primitive style and bold, expressive color.

Born in Hamburg, Müller had a harrowing childhood as his family relocated and was separated escaping the Nazis. He contracted rheumatic fever as a child which plagued him throughout his life and he eventually died from a weak heart. From 1945-1950, he studied in New York and Provincetown under Hans Hoffman, the mentor and father figure he rebelled against in favor of working in a figurative mode.

Müller made an enormous impact on the work of Bob Thompson, who spent the summer of 1958 in Provincetown and would not have known Müller who died in January of that year. Thompson paid tribute to Müller in the large oil, The Funeral of Jan Müller. His wife Dody Müller remembers “thinking [at the time] how odd it was that Thompson had produced this painting in which an actual event was recreated ‘from imagination and hearsay’" (quoted in Thelma Golden, Bob Thompson, 1998, p. 41). The influence is evident in Thompson’s later work: “in the paintings Thompson began to conceive and execute the following year, in New York, after his first Provincetown summer—paintings with equestrian figures; schematic, candy-colored landscapes; and anonymous nude women—Thompson’s debt to Jan Müller becomes clear" (Golden, p. 43).