Sir John Everett Millais, 1st BaronetPRA (UK:/ˈmɪleɪ/MIL-ay,US:/mɪˈleɪ/mil-AY;[1][2] 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was anEnglish painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.[3] He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street (now number 7). Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his paintingChrist in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group,Ophelia, in 1851–52.
By the mid-1850s, Millais was moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style to develop a new form of realism in his art. His later works were enormously successful, making Millais one of the wealthiest artists of his day, but some former admirers includingWilliam Morris saw this as a sell-out (Millais notoriously allowed one of his paintings to be used for a sentimental soap advertisement). While these and early 20th-century critics, reading art through the lens ofModernism, viewed much of his later production as wanting, this perspective has changed in recent decades, as his later works have come to be seen in the context of wider changes and advanced tendencies in the broader late nineteenth-century art world, and can now be seen as predictive of the art world of the present.
Millais's personal life has also played a significant role in his reputation. His wifeEffie was formerly married to the criticJohn Ruskin, who had supported Millais's early work. Theannulment of the Ruskin marriage and Effie's subsequent marriage to Millais have sometimes been linked to his change of style, but she became a powerful promoter of his work and they worked in concert to secure commissions and expand their social and intellectual circles.
Millais was born inSouthampton, England, in 1829, of a prominentJersey-based family. His parents were John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais (née Evermy). Most of his early childhood was spent in Jersey, to which he retained a strong devotion throughout his life. The authorThackeray once asked him "when England conquered Jersey". Millais replied "Never! Jersey conquered England."[4] The family moved toDinan in Brittany for a few years in his childhood.
His mother's "forceful personality" was the most powerful influence on his early life. She had a keen interest in art and music, and encouraged her son's artistic bent, promoting the relocating of the family to London to help develop contacts at the Royal Academy of Art. He later said "I owe everything to my mother."[5]
Millais'sChrist in the House of His Parents (1849–50) was highly controversial because of its realistic portrayal of a working classHoly Family labouring in a messy carpentry workshop. Later works were also controversial, though less so. Millais achieved popular success withA Huguenot (1851–52), which depicts a young couple about to be separated because of religious conflicts. He repeated this theme in many later works. All these early works were painted with great attention to detail, often concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world.
In paintings such asOphelia (1851–52) Millais created dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces based on the integration of naturalistic elements. This approach has been described as a kind of "pictorial eco-system".Mariana is a painting that Millais painted in 1850–51 based on the playMeasure for Measure byWilliam Shakespeare and the poem of the same name byAlfred, Lord Tennyson, from 1830. In the play, the young Mariana was to be married, but was rejected by her betrothed when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck.
This style was promoted by the criticJohn Ruskin, who had defended the Pre-Raphaelites against their critics. Millais's friendship with Ruskin introduced him to Ruskin's wifeEffie.[6]
Soon after they met, she modelled for his paintingThe Order of Release. As Millais painted Effie, they fell in love. Despite having been married to Ruskin for several years, Effie was still a virgin. Her parents realised something was wrong and she filed for anannulment.
In 1855, after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled, Effie and John Millais married. He and Effie eventually had eight children: Everett, born in 1856; George, born in 1857; Effie, born in 1858; Mary, born in 1860; Alice, born in 1862; Geoffroy, born in 1863; John in 1865; and Sophie in 1868. Their youngest son,John Guille Millais, became a naturalist, wildlife artist, and Millais's posthumous biographer. Their daughter Alice (1862–1936), later Alice Stuart-Worsley after she marriedCharles Stuart-Worsley, was a close friend and muse of the composerEdward Elgar, and is thought to have been an inspiration for themes in hisViolin Concerto.[7]
Effie's younger sisterSophie Gray sat for several pictures by Millais, prompting some speculation about the nature of their apparently fond relationship.[8]
After his marriage, Millais began to paint in a broader style, which was condemned by Ruskin as "a catastrophe". It has been argued that this change of style resulted from Millais's need to increase his output to support his growing family. Unsympathetic critics such asWilliam Morris accused him of "selling out" to achieve popularity and wealth. His admirers, in contrast, pointed to the artist's connections withWhistler andAlbert Moore, and influence onJohn Singer Sargent. Millais himself argued that as he grew more confident as an artist, he could paint with greater boldness. In his article "Thoughts on our Art of Today" (1888), he recommendedVelázquez andRembrandt as models for artists to follow. Paintings such asThe Eve of St. Agnes andThe Somnambulist clearly show an ongoing dialogue between the artist and Whistler, whose work Millais strongly supported. Other paintings of the late 1850s and 1860s can be interpreted as anticipating aspects of theAesthetic Movement. Many deploy broad blocks of harmoniously arranged colour and are symbolic rather than narratival. From 1862, the Millais family lived at 7 Cromwell Place, Kensington, London.[9]
Later works, from the 1870s onwards demonstrate Millais's reverence forOld Masters such asJoshua Reynolds and Velázquez. Many of these paintings were on an historical theme. Notable among these areThe Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878) depicting thePrinces in the Tower,The Northwest Passage (1874) and theBoyhood of Raleigh (1871). Such paintings indicate Millais's interest in subjects connected to Britain's history and expanding empire. Millais also achieved great popularity with his paintings of children, notablyBubbles (1886) – famous, or perhaps notorious, for being used in the advertising ofPears soap – andCherry Ripe. His last project (1896) was to be a painting entitled "The Last Trek". Based on his illustration for his son's book, it depicted a hunter lying dead in theveldt, his body contemplated by two onlookers.
His many landscape paintings of this period usually depict difficult or dangerous terrain. The first of these,Chill October (1870, Collection ofAndrew Lloyd Webber), was painted inPerth, near his wife's family home. It was the first of the large-scale Scottish landscapes Millais painted periodically throughout his later career. Usually autumnal and often bleakly unpicturesque, they evoke a mood of melancholy and sense of transience that recalls his cycle-of-nature paintings of the later 1850s, especiallyAutumn Leaves (Manchester Art Gallery) andThe Vale of Rest (Tate Britain), though with little or no direct symbolism or human activity to point to their meaning.
John Everett Millais by J. P. Mayall[10] fromArtists at Home,photogravure, published 1884, Department of Image Collections,[11] National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC
In 1870 Millais returned to full landscape pictures, and over the next twenty years painted a number of scenes of Perthshire where he was annually found hunting and fishing from August until late into the autumn each year. Most of these landscapes are autumnal or early winter in season and show bleak, dank, water-fringed bog or moor, loch, and riverside. Millais never returned to "blade by blade"landscape painting, nor to the vibrant greens of his own outdoor work in the early fifties, although the assured handling of his broader, freer later style is equally accomplished in its close observation of scenery. Many were painted elsewhere inPerthshire, nearDunkeld andBirnam, where Millais rented grand houses each autumn to hunt and fish.Christmas Eve, his first full landscape snow scene, painted in 1887, was a view looking towardsMurthly Castle.
Millais was also very successful as a book illustrator, notably for the works ofAnthony Trollope and the poems ofTennyson. His complex illustrations of theparables of Jesus were published in 1864. His father-in-law commissionedstained-glass windows based on them forKinnoull Parish Church,Kinnoull. He also provided illustrations for magazines such asGood Words. As a young man, Millais frequently went on sketching expeditions to Keston and Hayes. While there he painted a sign for an inn where he used to stay, near to Hayes church (cited inChums Annual, 1896, page 213).
Millais was elected as an associate member of theRoyal Academy of Arts in 1853; a decade later in 1863, he was elected as a full member of the Academy, in which he was a prominent and active participant.
After the death ofLord Leighton in 1896, Millais was elected President of the Royal Academy. He died later in the same year fromthroat cancer. He was buried in the crypt ofSt Paul's Cathedral.[13]
When Millais died in 1896, thePrince of Wales (later to becomeKing Edward VII) chaired a memorial committee which commissioned a statue of the artist.[15] The statue, byThomas Brock, was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Britain) in the garden on the east side in 1905. On 23 November that year, thePall Mall Gazette called it "a breezy statue, representing the man in the characteristic attitude in which we all knew him".[15] In 1953, Tate directorNorman Reid attempted to have it replaced byAuguste Rodin'sJohn the Baptist, and in 1962 again proposed its removal, calling its presence "positively harmful".[citation needed] His efforts were frustrated by the statue's owner, theMinistry of Works. Ownership was transferred from the Ministry toEnglish Heritage in 1996, and by them in turn to the Tate.[15] In 2000, under Stephen Deuchar's directorship, the statue was removed to the side of the building to welcome visitors to the refurbished Manton Road entrance.[15] In 2007, the artist was the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain, London visited by 151,000 people.[16] The exhibition then traveled to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, followed by venues in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan, and seen by over 660,000 visitors in total.
An Idyll of 1745. The three female artists models on the right were the sisters Lily Pettigrew (1870–1920);Hetty Pettigrew (1867–1953) and Rose Pettigrew (1872–1905)
Portrait of Effie Millais (1873), Perth Museum and Art Gallery
Barlow, PaulTime Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais, Ashgate 2005.
Bennett, Mary.Footnotes to the Millais Exhibition (Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool Bulletin, No 12 1967).
Bennett, Mary (catalogue) (Walker Art Gallery and Royal Academy catalogue 1967).
Campbell-Johnston, R (25 September 2007)."Master of Victorian values".Visual Arts. London: The Times. Archived fromthe original on 2 April 2008. Retrieved24 September 2007.
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