john everett millais biography

John Everett Millais

British Painter

Summary of John Everett Millais

Having emerged as a bone-fide child prodigy, Millais would embark on a career that saw him enjoy domestic and international fame in his own lifetime. As a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , he joined a tight-knit group of artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt , who rebelled against the prevailing norms in academic art. Considered by many to be the first avant-garde movement in British art, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood drew their inspiration from (pre-Raphaelite) artists such as Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer and, like them, Millais looked directly to nature for inspiration. Known initially for an unprecedented attention to pictorial realism, Millais would develop a penchant for political works before, in later years, devoting himself exclusively to portraiture and Scottish landscapes. Millais is also recognized as the first Academy artist to expand his repertoire through newspaper illustration and reproductive prints. His brilliant career culminated in his election as President of the Royal Academy in 1896.

Accomplishments

• Millais's work as a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood offered the first meaningful challenge to the "predictable" art of the Academy and its preference for early Italian Renaissance and Classical art . His paintings were the work of a pious young man with an almost fetishistic attention to detail. His early works showed a special daring in the way his religious parables represented holy figures as ordinary people placed in natural surroundings.
• Millais can take credit for helping legitimize the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as a serious movement and for raising its popularity and credibility amongst the public. He achieved this through a series of romantic paintings set against the backdrop of real political events. These historical works, delivered with his attention to detail, were also widely admired for the way in which he was able to capture the emotional state of his female protagonists.
• In a move away from his strict adherence to realism, Millais would turn to the theme of the female in nature, expressed through a more decorative style. These canvases were seen very much as meditations on the idea of beauty and youth, and on the passages of time. Though they were not to everyone's taste (they drew the sting of the influential critic, and champion of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Ruskin for instance) they proved to be significant transitional works that saw Millais's influence start to widen by impacting directly on the Aesthetic movement .
• For his mature works, Millais travelled to Scotland where he made a number of important landscapes. These pieces lacked his earlier eye for detail; the artist being intent rather on using his palette to explore a range of emotional effects. What distinguished Millais's works from others working in landscapes was the variety in his paintings which saw him produce images that ranged from high drama to quiet melancholy.
• Running parallel to his landscape painting, Millais emerged as a highly accomplished portrait painter. On the one hand his "unfussy" adult portraits imbued his sitters, several of whom held high positions in public office, with a power and modesty that drew comparisons with the likes of Rembrandt and Velazquez . On the other, he produced several highly effective and sentimental portraits of young children which saw (though not to everyone's approval) the artist break new ground in terms of the cross-over between fine art and mass reproduction.

The Life of John Everett Millais

Having already caused an uproar within the British art establishment with his paintings, Millais, with Effie Gray and John Ruskin, scandalized Victorian society as players in one of the greatest love triangles in the history of art.

Important Art by John Everett Millais

Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's Shop)

Millais here depicts a young Christ just after his hand has been accidentally impaled by a nail. His father, Joseph, is in anxious close attendance, leaning over his workshop table, while, Mary, his mother, kneels beside him in an attempt to provide comfort. His grandmother, Anne, still holds the pliers she has used to remove the nail, while Christ's cousin, John the Baptist, brings him a dish of water as a balm for his wound. Rich in symbolism, the art historian Jason Rosenfeld identifies the "objects that refer to events in the Passion of Christ: carpentry tools that will later be used to make his crucifix on the back wall; the cut on his palm that has dripped blood on to his left foot and alludes to the stigmata, his wounds on the cross; the dove perched on a ladder, reflecting the Holy Spirit; the water carried by the young John the Baptist on the right, referring to his role in the story; and even the kneeling pose of the Virgin, which foreshadows her prostrate form at the foot of the cross". Millais's almost obsessive attention to detail was a signifying feature of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Indeed, Pre-Raphaelitism insisted on a fidelity to fine detail, even at the risk of showing ugliness and there were many who criticized the movement. The art historian John Rothenstein noted for instance that Millais's "remarkable picture gave particular offence for being too literal [a] representation of a sacred subject, for representing the Holy Family as real people instead of pious myth, for treating them in the words of The Athenaeum , 'with a circumstantial Art language from which we recoil with loathing and disgust'". Rothenstein cited Charles Dickens no less, who, in an open address to Millais in a June 1850 issue of Household Words , complained that "wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed" and that the painting "would stand out from the rest of the company as a monster in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin shop in England".

Oil on canvas - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

Millais's most iconic work, and probably the most famous of all the early Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Ophelia depicts the moment from Shakespeare's Hamlet when, driven insane by grief after her father's murder, Hamlet's lover drowns herself in a stream. She is shown floating on her back in the murky water with arms outstretched; her haunting facial expression emphasized against the rich natural tones of her natural surroundings. The painting demonstrates Millais's ability to apply paint with a deftness of touch that captures light, textures, and natural details with a rare precision. But the painting of Ophelia was a far from happy experience for the painter. He worked eleven-hour days on the Hogsmill river near Ewell in preparing the setting for Ophelia , and in a letter to the wife of Thomas Combe, complained: "My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced. The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh ... I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay ... am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water, and becoming intimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that Lady sank to muddy death, together with the (less likely) total disappearance, through the voracity of the flies ... Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging". The model for Ophelia was a young woman named Elizabeth Siddal and it is her story that effectively renders Ophelia the tale of two - one fictional, one real - tragic heroines. Painting her over a period of four months, Siddal was required to lay in a bathtub of warm water for hours at a time. During one sitting the under-tub heating failed leaving Siddal with a serious fever. Her father became so angry at his daughter's mistreatment that he threatened Millais with legal action if he did not agree to cover Elizabeth's medical expenses (which he did). But her presence in this painting is made truly poignant once one learns of her relationship with a third protagonist: Millais's colleague Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Siddal had been Rossetti's muse for several years before the couple married in 1860. However, their relationship was soured by Rossetti's constant philandering and the sickly Siddal's ongoing bouts of melancholy and ill health. Already addicted to opium, she suffered postpartum depression following the still-birth of the couple's daughter in 1862, and died several days later from an overdose of laudanum. It is not known if the overdose was accidental or intentional.

A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge

A Huguenot features two lovers locked in an embrace set behind a garden wall and surrounded by foliage. The young woman is attempting to tie a white band around her lover's left arm but he is preventing her with his right hand as he cradles her head with his left. The work, considered a masterpiece of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement, is a deeply romantic painting set against the backdrop of a real historical event; the slaughter of 3,000 Protestant Huguenots by the Roman Catholics on August 24, 1572. Here the young woman, fearing for the safety of her love, is trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him to wear the white arm band that would indicate he was Catholic and spare him his inevitable fate. Millais described this courage on the young man's part stating, "but he, holding his faith above his greatest worldly love, will be softly preventing her". The painting was enthusiastically received and helped to place the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood among the legitimate movements in British art history. In describing its impact in 1853, art critic William Michael Rosetti wrote, "mainly owing to Millais's picture [the movement] had practically triumphed - issuing from the dust and smother of four years' groping surprise on the part of critics and public, taking the form mostly of thick-and-thin vituperation".

Oil on canvas - Private Collection

The Order of Release, 1746

Millais sometimes used his paintings to make political statements and to explore historical themes. Rendered in fine picture detail, vivid colors and a striking tonalities, The Order of Release tells the story of a Jacobite soldier who, having been taken prisoner during a rebellion against the British loyalists, has been released after their defeat at the Battle of Culloden in April of 1746. A British soldier depicted on the left of the canvas looks on as the prisoner falls into the arms of his wife who also holds their young son. A pet dog reaches up to greet his returning master pawing at his injured right arm which is supported with a sling. Besides focusing on the human (rather than heroic) aspect to the rebellion, this work is important because it marks the first time Millais painted his future wife Effie. At this time she was unhappily married to his friend, the influential art critic John Ruskin. According to art historian Jason Rosenfeld, Effie was overjoyed to be used for the wife in this painting writing to her mother, "that she was quite thrilled that Millais had captured her likeness absolutely, and that people would recognize her on the Academy walls come May". Indeed, Frances Fowle, writing on behalf of the Tate Museum, explained that "when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853 it proved so popular that a policeman had to be installed in front of the picture to move the spectators on". Of special note here is the way that Millais was able to imbue his female figures with an air of mystery. According to Rosenfeld, the soldier's wife is one of many examples in the artist's work in which "the emotional states of these women do not allow them to engage fully, or at least actively, with their environment. It is as if the artist is making a study of female psychology under duress, of varying forms of trance [...] Millais allowed the narrative to remain open. How did this woman secure her husband's release from imprisonment? In the inky bleakness of this jail, in the picture's quiet, its reserve, its cold meditative air, Millais conveyed great weight and momentousness".

Autumn Leaves

A group of four girls dominate the foreground of John Everett Millais's Autumn Leaves . Positioned around a pile of leaves; one girl holds an empty basket, another is adding a handful of leaves to the pile, and another holds a rake. Only the youngest seems delinquent in her chores as she holds an apple from which she has taken a bite. While two of the girls are preoccupied with their environment, the two girls on the left of the frame stare directly out at the viewer. This work was painted shortly after Millais's return from his honeymoon and includes two of his wife Effie's sisters, Alice and Sophie, here depicted in dark green dresses. Millais had a good relationship with Effie's family and this painting marks the beginning of a long practice of including his two sisters-in-law in his work. It also explores a theme that he would continue throughout his career, that of the passing of time; which is seen here not only in the autumn season with its falling leaves but also in the almost indiscernible figure of a man holding a scythe in the shadowy background. In describing this new theme, Jason Rosenfeld described it as "Millais's finest early foray into a theme that would obsess him, twinned with the recurrent concept of morality [...] It is nostalgia, and it is something that connoted both the personal and the modern in his art [...] In Autumn Leaves , Millais dealt with the melancholy associated with life's inevitable progression". That he achieves this exploration through vivid imagery and beautifully rendered figures is typical of his artistic style. Of the sense of sentimentality this painting evoked, Millais stated, "Is there any sensation more delicious than that awakened by the odour of burning leaves? To me nothing brings back sweeter memories of the days that are gone; it is the incense offered by departing summer to the sky, and it brings one a happy conviction that Time puts a peaceful seal on all that was gone".

Oil on canvas - Collection of Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom

The theme of females in nature, a recurring feature of Millais's later work, is the subject of Spring in which eight girls of varying ages are relaxing in an orchard surrounded by blossoming apple trees. That they were earlier involved in another activity is made clear by the two baskets overflowing with flowers, but they are at the moment all engaged in various degrees of repose. One girl, pours water into a small bowl for another who reaches out to take it; while the most striking of figures, an older girl in a bright yellow dress lies on her back, arms outreached in front of her and head turned to gaze directly out at the viewer. At first glance, the painting can be seen as a visual meditation on the beauty of youth. But there are two other issues which Millais is also addressing here. First, Millais is attempting to comment on the passing of time and the inevitability of one's own mortality here represented by the scythe resting behind the girls. Millais is also making reference to the burgeoning sexuality of the older girls, most notably the figure in the yellow dress who stares provocatively out at the viewer. The way Millais depicted her influenced the Aestheticism art movement. As Rosenfeld explains, "ultimately this figure is risqué, bearing an intensely powerful gaze. And in its 'relaxed moody dreaminess' Spring represents themes to be taken up in the Aesthetic movement. It is one of Millais's pictures of this period that is advanced in its thematics, its decorative unity, lack of a demonstrative literary subject and overall opulence of colour and emphasis on beauty". Millais's move away from realism did not sit at all well with John Ruskin. The art critic (who could have been harbouring resentment at Millais's recent marriage to his former wife) was, in Rosenfeld's words, "merciless in his criticism of the nature in Spring [...] taking issue with what he saw as its artificiality and writing of 'this fierce and rigid orchard - this angry blooming (petals, as it were, of japanned brass)'".

Oil on canvas - Collection of Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, United Kingdom

Chill October

Chill October captures the brooding landscape surrounding the Scottish village of Seggieden located near his wife's family's home in Perth. As the title denotes, the artist has captured the area in October, and so everything is rendered in rich autumnal hues of golds, browns and yellows. The crisp fall breeze is captured by the swaying trees located to right of the river which are leaning towards the left of canvas as a flock of birds circle above a gray, cloud-filled sky. This is an important painting in Millais's oeuvre as it marks his return to the landscape genre. It was in fact the first of twenty-one Scottish landscapes he would create towards the end of his career. Millais was eager to return to the genre, writing to his wife in 1868, "I am very anxious to come out particularly strong next year in our new Exhibition rooms and I must try and paint an outdoor picture if I can". He worked with feverish energy but it would take two more years before he accomplished his goal. Coming long after the expiration of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, his landscapes abandoned his fetishistic eye for detail in an effort to explore a greater range of nature's emotion effects. Indeed, Rosenfeld wrote that, "with this picture Millais established himself as the pre-eminent and most advanced interpreter of nature in British painting, and set the stage for the most impressive works of his later career". He added that "some are dramatic [and] some are melancholy" but that they are all "full of striking effects and atmosphere, and each is singularly varied, unlike the quite repetitive practices of the major dedicated landscapists of the late nineteenth century".

Oil on canvas - Collection of Lord Lloyd-Webber Collection

Hearts are Trumps: Portraits of Elizabeth, Diana, and Mary, Daughters of Walter Armstrong, Esq.

Hearts are Trumps features the three daughters of Millais's patron Walter Armstrong. We see here that the artist had not lost his keen eye for detail. This is most evident in the dresses of Elizabeth, Diana and Mary and also in background features such as wallpaper, a large potted plant and an ornate furniture piece/card table. Describing the painting, the Tate museum suggests that "the card game, and the title of the work, hint at competition over who would marry first. This was seen as matter of great important at the time for women of their social class. This work presents the social structures and expectations of the period as a game that these women have learnt to play skilfully". The painting also makes reference to another earlier British master painter, Joshua Reynolds and his The Ladies Waldegrave (1780-81) which also featured three young ladies engaged in a similar setting. When comparing the works, one cannot help but see the contemporizing of the behaviors of young women in society that Millais was trying to make. According to art historian Jason Rosenfeld paintings featuring such girls were often made, "to cause a stir and elicit interest when exhibited in public. Reynolds's picture has recently been interpreted as consumed by modesty and purity [...] and like Millais's work, refers to marriageability, for the locked drawer plainly visible in the middle is a traditional symbol of female virginity [...] But the presence of] a flat more decorative card table in Millais's picture, and the keyhole on the drawer is very much empty, perhaps implying that these girls will have more of a role in choosing their mates than their counterparts of a century earlier". This painting also represents the artist's modernization of portraiture painting that distinguished him from established masters of portraiture such as Reynolds. There is a heavier use of the brush and a thick impasto style employed here by Millais. This approach would define his portraits and would contribute to his high demand as a portrait artist during his later career.

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone M. P.

Millais was by now highly respected for his portraiture and received many commissions, although this portrait of the British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone was painted at the artist's own request. He is rendered in side profile in a pensive pose befitting that of a political figure of his standing. Indeed, Gladstone's wife, Catherine, said of the portrait, "Mr. Gladstone was thinking at the time how terrible a sin would be committed if England was to go to war for the Turks". According to Rosenfeld, Millais's approach to portraiture, "forces a confrontation with the face and persona of the sitter, without distraction by ephemera. This turned out to be quite suitable for men such as Gladstone, who saw themselves as intellectuals who practiced politics, men of deep thought and compassion". The intensity and humility with which Millais rendered his sitters was acknowledged by both the general public and the art establishment. In 1898 then Royal Academy president Edward Poynter praised the portrait of Gladstone as, "unrivalled since the days of Rembrandt and Velasquez in its rendering of the mind and the spirit of the man". The sitter himself was so pleased with the portrait that he and the artist became lifelong friends. It was Gladstone indeed who arranged for Millais to become a Baronet; the first in his profession to receive such an honor.

Oil on canvas - Collection of National Portrait Gallery, London

Millais's painting, which continued the tradition of Jean-Siméon Chardin's Soap Bubbles (1739) and Édouard Manet's Soap Bubbles (1867), is one of the many beautifully rendered portraits featuring children. The subject (the artist's own grandson) sits pensively looking up at a soap bubble that floats above his head. In his hands are the tools that have created such the wonderous novelty: a bowl of soapy water and a pipe. Millais often explored issues of mortality and the passing of time and here he employs the long-established technique of vanitas paintings in which certain objects such as hour glasses, time pieces, rotting fruit, and bubbles are intended to be symbols of one's own mortality. While art critic Maev Kennedy has referred to the painting as "one of the most sentimental child portraits in art history", it generated a scandal which lasted long after the artist's passing. The painting was sold by Millais to the editor of the Illustrated London News who distributed copies of it with their Christmas edition in 1887. It was subsequently sold on to the Pears' Soap company who used the image as an advertisement after adding an image of their bar of soap to the work (placed at the child's feet). While Millais had worked as an illustrator, the mass reproduction of the work was seen by many as regressive step that sullied the status of fine art. According to curator Dr. Alison Smith, "there was such an outcry that Millais's son [later] insisted his father knew nothing about it - but of course we have the correspondence and we know he did, and raised no objection at all, provided the print was good enough".

Oil on canvas - Collection of Unilever PLC

Biography of John Everett Millais

Childhood and education.

The youngest of three siblings, John Everett Millais was born into a comfortable middle-class Military family. His father, John William Millais, was a keen "Sunday painter" and John, and his brother William, would become heirs to their father's love of art. Millais, who was home-schooled by his mother, Mary Emily Hodgkinson, enjoyed an idyllic childhood. Commenting on earlier biographical writings on Millais, the art historian Jason Rosenfeld observed that "there are many references to his early love of outdoor activities, whether it be fishing, hunting, walking, riding, playing cricket or swimming. This was to overcome a delicate constitution and a rail-thin figure, a physical characteristic often remarked upon by those who knew him before he was an adult".

Millais's prodigious talent for art was fully embraced by his parents. Their unblinking faith in their nine year old son's ability saw the entire family relocate to London in 1838 where he could begin to study art seriously. According to Rosenfeld, "this gamble was on the strength of juvenile drawings that he had made of militiamen in France and Jersey and of fanciful subjects, and productive lessons from a Paris-trained artist and illustrator".

Early Training

Upon arrival in London, his mother presented her son to the president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Martin Shee. Confronted with a nine-year-old boy, Shee quickly dismissed Mary by suggesting her son would be better served if he trained to sweep chimneys. She persisted, however, and once he saw examples of Millais's work he reversed his opinion. Millais was sent to begin his training at Henry Sass's Academy and was admitted on probation two years later to the Royal Academy. He became a full student in 1846, three years after receiving his first medal for distinction. His youth did not set him apart from his more mature fellows who were generally won over by his cheerful disposition and kind personality. According to Rosenfeld, indeed, "Millais became a favourite of the other pupils, lightly teased for his youth and diminutive size compared to the older students but generally adored".

Mature Period

Despite his fine training, Millais would tire of what he felt were the narrow practices of the Old Masters and the heavy emphasis the Academy placed on the excellence of Renaissance artists, including, and forward of, Raphael. In 1848 he joined a clandestine group of seven young artists made up of fellow Academy students: Dante Gabriel Rosetti , William Holman Hunt , James Collinson, William Michael Rosetti, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner. The group would go by the name of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood . The Brotherhood strove for an exacting realism in paintings that drew thematic inspiration from religious, literary, and poetic sources, especially those dealing with the topic of love and death. For his part, Millais, painted many works in this style including one of his greatest masterpieces, Christ in the House of his Parents (The Carpenter's Shop) (1849-50) aged just 21.

Tracing a lineage back the works of fifteenth-century "primitives" such as Stefan Lochner and Fra Angelico , the art historian E. H. Gombrich noted that "the painters in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood [...] saw in them all the charm of simple devotion and a child-like heart" that was a derivation of "the longing of Victorian masters for innocence" in art. Gombrich argued that looking back to an "age of faith" could not compete thematically with the more progressive/contemporary style of French painters such as Delacroix and Courbet and was thus fated to be short-lived. But, as the art historian John Rothenstein noted, at the time of its inception the Brotherhood "was the most positive English expression of a widespread imaginative recoil from the fog-girt meanness of the outward aspect of the society brought into being by the Industrial Revolution, and from the listless but pretentious classicism, remotely derivative from the Renaissance, that stood for 'generalized form', property scenery and studio lighting".

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were disciples of the art critic John Ruskin who, in turn, became the Group's staunchest champion. He had high hopes for the group predicting that they might "lay in our England the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world had seen for three hundred years". According to Rosenfeld, the Brotherhood rose to Ruskin's challenge for "artists to open their eyes to the plethora of subjects available to them in the natural world, and to escape the strictures of traditional art instruction". The practice typically involved painting outdoors and by drawing directly from nature, and though this amounted to an afront to traditional painters and patrons, the Brotherhood quickly grew in popularity; due, in no small part, to Ruskin's support for the group.

Even though the pious Millais found himself amongst like-minded men, he was once removed from the group. Rosenfeld explains how, "he was notoriously unattached, and seemed to have had little interest in romantic associations [...] Millais stayed at home despite the fact that he was making more money than his peers, but he was largely supporting his family, even going to theatres to sketch actors to cover expenses". In turn his family doted on him and Millais's cousin, Edward Benest, once described how, "everything in that house was characteristic of the great devotion of all to the young artist; and yet he was in no way spoilt".

Millais's would overcome his social shyness once he started socializing with Ruskin and his wife, Euphemia - "Effie" - Chalmers Gray. The Ruskins did not enjoy a happy marriage. Ruskin, nine years his wife's senior, refused to consummate their marriage because of his refusal to father children.

Millais was immediately attracted to Effie and painted her portrait several times (and even tutored her in art lessons). His attraction quickly turned to love; the artist becoming even more smitten when he learned of Effie's marital unhappiness. Effie soon developed feelings for Millais who began to try and distance himself socially from Ruskin, a situation made all-the-more difficult given he was painting Ruskin's portrait at the time. Millais wrote to Effie's mother in 1854 stating: "If I had only myself to consult, I should write immediately and refuse to go on further with the portrait, which is the most hateful task I ever had to perform, but I am so anxious that Effie should not suffer further for any act of mine that I will put up with anything rather than increase her suffering". The Ruskins' marriage ended in April of 1854 when Effie filed for an annulment (which was granted in July of that year). Millais married Effie a year later on July 3, 1855, marking the start of a loving and happy marriage in which the couple raised four sons and two daughters.

The men's friendship ended, but Ruskin's reviews of Millais's work remained respectful (if somewhat less enthusiastic). Millais was entering a new phase in his art and produced many impressive paintings during this period, such as Autumn Leaves (1855-56). His new works were moving away from a strict adherence to realism (ergo his move away from Pre-Raphaelitism). Rosenfeld described how Millais had brought "a more mature aspect of his art" which coincided with his new role as a Royal Academy associate and his realization of the importance of prints as a means of supplementing his income and spreading his reputation.

By the late 1850s Millais was becoming more and more versatile, even using his art to make political statements. He also began to practice using his own children as models. He soon gained widespread recognition for his ability to capture the essence of childhood, receiving several commissions for children's portraits. These works were in such demand, in fact, that even highly connected and prestigious patrons could not be guaranteed a work. According to Rosenfeld, "at the Royal Academy dinner on 4 May 1867, Millais met Albert, Prince of Wales, who expressed a desire to purchase one of the artist's paintings that featured children, but Millais had to tell him they had all been sold".

In addition to his commissions, and his eagerness to sell prints of his paintings, he took on commercial jobs including the creation of eighteen designs for an 1857 publication of Alfred Tennyson's poems. According to Rosenfeld, "for over a decade Millais would work unceasingly in black and white for a variety of publishers [...] in addition to multiple publications from weeklies such as the Illustrated London News and Punch , to literary journals". His illustrative work would eventually decrease, however, as he started to obtain a steady income from the sale of his paintings for which there was a growing demand. His improved commercial situation coincided with his rise through the ranks at the Royal Academy (he would become a full Academician at the end of 1863).

Millais's exhibition at the Academy in 1859 brought him to the attention of James McNeill Whistler who was hugely impressed with his paintings. When the two men were introduced, Whistler told Millais, "I never flatter, but I will say that your picture is the finest piece of colour that has been on the walls of the Royal Academy for years". The style in which Millais was painting works such as Spring (1856-59) carried a strong narrative element featuring beautifully rendered young women and these works informed directly on the Aesthetic movement of which Whistler was a founding member.

Later Period

The last decades of Millais's life were busy on a professional and a personal front. His acclaim at exhibitions, including the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, furthered still his reputation, but in his later years he focused almost exclusively on landscapes and portraiture. For his landscapes, Millais travelled to Scotland where he produced a total of twenty-one vistas, very often under difficult weather conditions. In a letter to his daughter Mary in 1876 he stated, "I could not feel my fingers, and gladly came in to a comfortable fire".

While he had created portraits since his early years at the Academy, his mature portraits were rendered in a heavier impasto style which brought him renewed respect. However, it was not his exquisite technical skill so much as his personal manner that his sitters responded to. Fellow artist Louise Jopling, who Millais painted in 1879, said of the artist: he was "the soul of good nature, and entirely without vanity, either personal or about his work [and] I never knew a man so utterly devoid of jealousy or spite".

Millais's most prestigious commissions came via two towering figures in British politics, Prime Ministers Benjamin Disraeli (in 1881) and William Ewart Gladstone (in 1879). Disraeli had told Millais, "I am a very bad sitter, but will not easily forego my chance of being known to posterity by your illustrious pencil", while Gladstone was so impressed with the artist's efforts he granted him the title of Baronet in 1885; making Millais the first British artist to receive the honor. The typically modest Millais was overwhelmed with the distinction, writing to his eldest daughter: "with the Queens approval Mr. Gladstone has made me a Baronet and the delight of the house is sweet to see, nothing but smiles from the kitchen upwards".

Personal tragedy plagued Millais during these years when his son George succumbed to typhoid fever in 1878. Devastated by the loss, he turned to painting for some solace. He later wrote to his friend Louise Jopling that, "when George died, I felt grateful for my work. Get you as soon as possible to your easel, as the surest means, not to forget, but to occupy your mind wholesomely and even happily".

Millais's health was dealt a severe blow when he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in 1894. He underwent surgery and a period of recuperation in Bath but he suffered from increasing headaches and eye pain. Writing to Effie, he said, "this enforced idleness is so wearying to me sometimes I feel I can very well resume my work, at others the old feeling comes back, and I dread the experiment [of returning to work] for fear of getting ill again". It was likely that the fear over his deteriorating health led to him creating his last works which returned him to religious themes.

Millais's health was so poor he could not fully appreciate his award of President of the Royal Academy - the very highest position in the British art establishment - which was bestowed on him on February 20, 1896. But, just three months later, he had to undergo a tracheotomy which robbed him of his capacity for speech, a situation that even saddened Queen Victoria who wrote to him asking if she could do anything to ease his situation. According to Rosenfeld, he asked that she might receive his wife, "having rejected her previously due to the annulment of her first marriage [which was] seen incorrectly by the Queen as a divorce". When he died soon after, aged just sixty-seven, the Queen wrote to a letter to Effie in which she expressed her personal, and the nation's, sadness over the loss of the greatest British artists of his age.

The Legacy of John Everett Millais

Millais played a key role in modernizing art in nineteenth century Britain. As a founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood he was part of one of the most radical movements in the history of British art, forming, in the words of art historian Jason Rosenfeld, "a youthfully bold challenge to the staid nature of the Royal Academy and art in general in Britain". As part of their reaction to the negative impact of industrialization, the Pre-Raphaelites revival of medieval styles, stories, and methods of production had a profound influence on the development of the Arts and Crafts movement (itself a precursor to Art Nouveau and Art Deco ) and its revival of handicrafts in design.

Millais provided inspiration for many different artists, not least Vincent van Gogh who was influenced by his Scottish landscapes. In addition, the air of mystery with which he rendered many of his figures, and the ambiguous narratives in many of his paintings created after he moved away from the Pre-Raphaelite style, paved the way for the Aestheticism movement; inspiring the work of its key members Edward Burne-Jones , Dante Gabriel Rosetti , and James Abbott McNeill Whistler .

Millais also made a decisive historical impact on the mass-reproduction of fine art. His forward thinking would see him produce paintings on the explicit understanding that his dealers would turn them into prints. In so doing he not only increased his own reputation, but also widened the accessibility (and potential for personal ownership) of fine art pieces. Likewise, while many fine artists viewed illustration as a derivative practice, Millais valued the art of drawing for journals and newspapers, not just as a means of supplementing his income, but also as a way of further cultivating his painting skills.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on John Everett Millais

• John Everett Millais Our Pick By Jason Rosenfeld
• Millais: Portraits By Peter Funnell, Kate Flint, and Malcolm Warner
• Tate British Artists: John Everett Millais By Christine Riding
• Obituary of Sir John Everett Millais Our Pick By The Times / Art Renewal Center / August 14, 1896
• Rebels of art and science: the empirical drive of the Pre-Raphaelites By John Holmes / Nature / October 24, 2018
• Tate sets out to rescue the reputation of artist tarnished by Bubbles Our Pick By Maev Kennedy / The Guardian / May 16, 2007
• Ophelia, Death, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Our Pick In this lecture, Ashmolean Museum curator Hannah Lyon discusses John Everett Millais's painting Ophelia.
• The Art of Illustration: Millais, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Idyllic School In this lecture, Dr. Paul Goldman of the University of London discusses the illustration work of John Everett Millais; something far less discussed than his paintings.
• Artist's love story still captures the imagination Our Pick TheCourier.co.uk / July 5, 2016 / This article describes the recent auction sale of one of John Everett Millais's paintings of his wife Effie. It also discusses the 2014 film Effie Gray which details the story of the annulment of her marriage to critic John Ruskin and eventual marriage to the artist. Written by Emma Thompson it stars Dakota Fanning in the lead role.
• How Gucci confirmed that Old Masters are back in fashion Our Pick Christies.com / March 12, 2018 / This article details how Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele's 2018 Spring/Summer Collection was inspired by old master paintings including John Everett Millais's Ophelia.

Related Artists

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by Jessica DiPalma

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Antony Todd

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt

Historic and Modern British Art

Prints and drawings rooms, artist biography, wikipedia entry.

Millais was born in Southampton, the son of John William Millais, a wealthy gentleman from an old Jersey family. His mother's family were prosperous saddlers. Considered a child prodigy, he came to London in 1838. He was sent to Sass's Art School, and won a silver medal at the Society of Arts at the age of nine. In 1840 he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools as their youngest ever student, winning a silver medal in 1843 for drawing from the antique, and a gold medal in 1847 for his painting The Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh . He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1846, with Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

At the Royal Academy he became friendly with fellow student William Holman Hunt, and contributed with Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti to the Cyclographic Society. In 1848 the three helped form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His first Pre-Raphaelite painting was Isabella (1848-9, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849. His entry for the following year, Christ in the House of His Parents ('The Carpenter's Shop') (1849-50, Tate Gallery N03584 ), was received unfavourably.

In 1855 he married Effie Chalmers, Ruskin's former wife, with whom he had fallen in love while he was holidaying with the Ruskins in Scotland. The couple settled in Perth, where he painted Autumn Leaves (1855-6, City of Manchester Art Galleries).

Between 1855 and 1864 Millais made illustrations for numerous publications, including the Moxon edition of Tennyson's poems (1857), the magazine Once a Week (1859 onwards) and several novels by Trollope. He moved back to London in 1861, where he achieved popular success as a painter of child subjects such as Bubbles (1886, A. & F. Pears Ltd.), which became famous as an advertisement for Pears soap. Also popular were his paintings of beautiful young women, such as Stella (1868, Manchester City Art Gallery). He built up a practice as a portraitist from the early 1870s, his sitters including Thomas Carlyle (1877), Lillie Langtry (1878), Gladstone (1879 and 1885), Disraeli (1881) and Tennyson (1881).

Millais was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1853, and a full member in 1863. In 1885 he was created a baronet and in 1896 was elected President of the Royal Academy, but died shortly thereafter in London. He is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Further reading: John Guille Millais, The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais , 2 volumes, London 1899 Leslie Parris (ed.), The Pre-Raphaelites , exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994

Terry Riggs January 1998

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet ( UK: MIL -ay , US: mil- AY ; 8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 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 painting Christ 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 including William 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 of Modernism, 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 wife Effie was formerly married to the critic John Ruskin, who had supported Millais's early work. The annulment 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.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License . Spotted a problem? Let us know .

The Lost Sheep

The pharisee and the publican, the wise virgins, the unjust judge and the importunate widow, the rich man and lazarus, the labourers in the vineyard, the marriage feast, artist as subject, british stock and alien inspiration, 1849, a momentary vision that once befell young millais, the artist attending the mourning of a young girl, sir john everett millais, film and audio.

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John Everett Millais Biography

• John Everett Millais

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Follow the path to fame of British painter, John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais was born in 8th June, 1829 in Southampton, England to the eminent family of Mr. and Mrs Millais. The father, J.W Millais, was an affluent man from Jersey and the mother, Emily Millais, came from a propertied family of saddlers. He spent a greater part of his childhood in Jersey, his father’s hometown but in 1938 he went to London.

In London, he was sent to Sass’s Art School to enhance the magnificent drawing talent that he had started exuding from his young age. At the age of 9, John Everett Millais had started getting significant accolades; he was, at the Society of Law, awarded a silver medal. One of the most salient aspects of John Everett’s painting talent is the tenacious belief that his mother had in him. His mother believed in him and encouraged him to pursue his dreams.

When John was 11, in 1840, he got an admission to the Royal Academy School. In the course of his stay there, he went on to receive more panegyrics in form of the awards that he was accorded. In 1843, John Everett Millais received a silver medal for his work; but this was just a tip of the iceberg. John’s painting finesse made him reputable in 1846 as his works started to exhibit in a series of arenas such as the Art Academies and Museums. To cap it all off, he made one of the most famous Christian-Art paintings of that time, The Tribe of Benjamin seizing the daughters of Shiloh, which earned him an award of a gold medal in 1847.

The year 1848 marked a significant stage in John Everett’s life during his time at the Royal Academy. It was at this time that John together with a conglomerate of two other friends, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti spearheaded the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This was an association of artists who controverted the prevalent conservative British art. They believed that artists who preceded Raphael (one of the pioneer painters) could do much better work.

His exquisite painting skills continued to thrive, as a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 1949, he did and exhibited the Isabella painting at the Royal Academy. The Isabella painting is at the moment, kept at the Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery

John Everett after Tying The Knot

In accordance with the Biblical concept of marriage where a man leaves his parents, finds a woman and the two become one, John Everett Millais found his better half in 1855. The beautiful lass, Euphemia Chalmers Gray pulled John’s heartstrings and they got married despite the fact that Euphemia had been married to and divorced John Everett’s acquaintance, John Ruskin. John and his wife, Euphemia, settled and established their home in Perth, Australia.

John and Euphemia begot eight children between 1856 and 1868. One of their sons, John Guille Millais, became a talented writer who did great posthumous biography for his father. Sophy Gray, who was Euphemia’s sister modelled for a myriad of pictures drawn by John Everett.

John Everett’s Salient Change of Style

His marriage to Euphemia saw a significant change in his style of painting. This aspect of change was greatly criticised by John Ruskin who began to vie his work with tremendous spite and disdain. On his part, he perceived his new style of art as a more mature and more confident form of art. He departed from the flamboyant Pre-Raphaelite painting style and adopted a more revamped and detailed form of painting. This new style of painting was orchestrated basically to support his significantly big family.

This transformation was in the sense that he began to tailor his paintings to suit the vagaries of public demand and his artwork since took a rather arbitrary way. Consequently, John Everett ceased to do paintings of morally motivating themes and conformed to paintings that would be pleasing to the public eye. Other than Ruskin, John Everett was heavily criticised by other renowned persons such as William Morris who came out strongly to castigate his ‘money-driven’ form of art.

On the other side of the coin, was a group of people who admired John’s new style of art. This is a group of people who held John’s art in very high regards that they could not disparage his work in any aspect. They viewed John’s art as exquisite by all standards and passionately defended him before those who sought to denigrate his work and view his art as diminute.

The proficiency and dedication of John Everett to art kept manifesting profoundly, even as a marriedman. In 1856, John Everett did the magnificent and well renowned painting, Autumn Leaves which are currently preserved at the Manchester City Art Galleries. Euphemia turned into John’s ‘number-one fan’ and actively promoted John’s work.

His tremendous painting skills made him one of the richest artists of that time as he was terrifically successful. He was elected as an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1853. This was quite a salient upshot in John Everett’s painting career. It was not the end though as John Everett was made a full member of the Royal Academy in 1963. In the course of his membership of the Royal Academy, he became the president of Royal Birmingham Society of Arts in 1882 by way of unanimous vote.

John Everett, as a member of the Royal Academy, continued to be hardworking and industrious. He was prominent therein and became actively involved in the activities of the academy. In 1885, his hard work was sufficiently rewarded; John Everett Millais, historically, became the first painter to be accorded a Hereditary Title. The Queen of England, Queen Victoria made him a Baronet of Palace Gate, in Jersey.

When Lord Leighton (The then president of the Royal academy) died in 1896, there was no better replacement for him than the man himself, John Everett Millais. John Everett was elected the president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896, succeeding Lord Leighton. Later that year, John Everett Millais met his untimely demise. He succumbed to throat cancer and was buried in the St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Upon his death, a statue was erected in front of The National Gallery of British Art, as it then was (Now Tate Britain) in 1905. The statue was located in the garden on the east side of compound. The installation of this statue was orchestrated by the Prince of Wales who chaired the committee which commissioned the statute.

The John Everett statue has faced a myriad of turbulences, among them, the attempt by the Director of Tate Britain, Sir Norman Reid to replace it with another statue; that of Auguste Rodin in 1953. Shots were being fired at the statue’s direction in 1962 when Sir Norman Reid once again vouched for its removal. However, the Pandora’s Box that he sought to open was slammed shut by the Ministry of Works, who owned the statue at that time.

However, the statue was removed in the year 2000 when the ownership changed hands from the Ministry of Works to the Ministry of English Heritage. This took place during the regime of Stephen Deuchar.

The Most Exquisite pieces of Art by John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais is a name that stands out in the precincts of painting as that of a man with an astounding prolificacy in painting. Some of the most exquisite artworks done by him include:

Christ in the House of His Parents of 1850

This was one of the exceptional pieces of art done by John Everett. It particularly spurred his popularity to a higher level due to its controversy. This was one of the first pieces of antique works that John Everett did while transitioning from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood style of writing to his new and reformed style.

A Huguenot of 1853

This was an embodiment of meticulous artwork which shows an estranged couple who are on the verge of separating due to religious altercations. This was quite a salient theme at that age and time and John Everett replicated it in a series of other paintings that he did.

The Boyhood of Raleigh of 1870

This is one of the paintings that elucidated John Everett’s tremendous love and affection for children. One intriguing feature of this painting is that it was modelled by his two elder sons. John Everett was a man with so much adoration for children that was inevitably replicated in the size of his family and the expression he portrayed in his paintings. This painting is currently kept at the Tate in London.

Bubbles (1886, A & F. Pears Ltd)

This is one of the paintings that brought to John Everett a great deal of popularity. It was a magnificent and one-of-a-kind painting which was quite significant at the time. It was used to advertise Pears soap.

John Everett was undoubtedly a prolific writer who deservedly earned reputable accolades during his artistic regime. Even at the point of his demise, he was a man of impeccable character and exceptional prowess.

Article Author

Tom Gurney in an art history expert. He received a BSc (Hons) degree from Salford University, UK, and has also studied famous artists and art movements for over 20 years. Tom has also published a number of books related to art history and continues to contribute to a number of different art websites. You can read more on Tom Gurney here.

Sir John Everett Millais Bt. PRA (1829 - 1896)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

A founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Sir John Everett Millais was internationally renowned during his lifetime, and his career culminated in his election as President of the Royal Academy in 1896.

As a child, Millais displayed a precocious artistic talent. In 1838 a meeting with Martin Archer Shee, the then President of the Royal Academy, led to Millais enrolling at Henry Sass’s private drawing school in London. In 1840, aged only eleven, he became the youngest artist ever admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. Known to his fellow students as ‘the Child’, Millais won his first RA silver medal in 1843.

While studying at the Royal Academy Schools, Millais and a group of like-minded colleagues including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the first avant-garde group in the history of British art. The PRB reacted against the prevailing view at the RA, and elsewhere, that Raphael and the later Renaissance tradition represented the artistic ideal. Instead, they drew inspiration from earlier artists including Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer whom they believed to have drawn more directly from nature.

Millais’ early statement of PRB principles, Christ in the House of his Parents , was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. Intended as a realistic corrective to traditional ‘Raphaelite’ depictions of the Holy Family, it met with almost universal disdain - Charles Dickens was amongst its strongest critics, warning his readers that the painting depicted ‘the lowest depths of what is mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting’. Subsequent paintings such as Ophelia and A Hugenot (both exhibited at the RA in 1852) were received more positively, however, and paved the way for Millais’ election as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1853.

By this time the great writer on art John Ruskin had begun championing Millais’ work, and it was while staying with Ruskin in Scotland in 1853 that Millais and Ruskin’s wife Effie Gray fell in love. Ruskin and Gray’s marriage was annulled on the grounds that it had never been consummated, leaving her free to marry Millais in 1855.

After their marriage, Millais and Effie lived in Perth for six years, and his art moved away from the tight observation of his earlier work to more generally atmospheric scenes like the one portrayed in Autumn Leaves . In 1861 the family returned to London and Millais was elected a Royal Academician in 1863. By this time Millais had acquired a taste for the Old Masters which ran contrary to his early PRB ideals—his RA diploma work was even titled A Souvenir of Velasquez .

In later years, portraiture became increasingly central to Millais’ practice, while reproductive prints provided a lucrative way of disseminating his work. In 1896, Millais succeeded Frederic Leighton as President of the Royal Academy, although he was seriously ill with cancer of the larynx, and died only six months after his election.

Royal Academician

Born: 8 June 1829 in Southampton, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom

Died: 13 August 1896

Nationality: British

RA Schools student from 12 December 1840

Elected ARA: 7 November 1853

Elected RA: 18 December 1863

President from: 1896 - 1896

Gender: Male

Preferred media: Painting and Illustration

Works by Sir John Everett Millais in the RA Collection

Sir John Everett Millais Bt. PRA

Wood-engraving

On the Water , 23rd July 1859

The Lost Piece of Silver , 1863

When first I met thee, warm and young...

Steel engraving

The Young Mother , 1857

Fragment of a drawing of a man in historic dress , ca. 1837

Pencil on brown wove paper

A Souvenir of Velazquez , 1868

Oil on canvas

Three figures at a water pump , ca. 1837

Pencil on beige wove paper

A dog in profile , ca. 1837

Pencil on off-white wove paper

Small standing figure in naval uniform, probably Lord Nelson , ca. 1837

Pencil on off-white paper

A woman watering plants in a garden , ca. 1837

Two studies of ears , ca. 1837

Pencil on cream wove paper

Drawing of a tavern scene with card players, probably after a Dutch painting

Drawing of two female figures skipping , ca. 1837

Drawing after Murillo's 'The Young Beggar' , March 1837

Drawing after Raphael's portrait of Pope Leo X and two cardinals , March 1837

Three figures, one with arms outstretched , ca. 1837

A pair of hands , late 1830s

Three figures in military dress , ca. 1837

A seated woman , ca. 1837

Studies of feet and hands , ca. 1837

Half length drawing of a bearded man with a child

A figure holding a rake , ca. 1837

Three standing figures - two adults and a child , ca. 1837

Roman soldiers , ca. 1837

Half length portrait of a woman in historic dress , ca. 1837

A cavalryman on horseback , ca. 1837

A ship in harbour with passengers on the dock , ca. 1837

A man carrying a large fishing net , ca. 1837

Drawing of the head of the Virgin Mary from Correggio's 'Ecce Homo' , 16 March 1837

Pencil on wove paper

A man resting on a rock , ca. 1837

Sketch after a print of Hogarth's portrait of Martin Folkes , March 15th 1837

A man carrying a sack , ca. 1837

Album sheet with Millais drawings attached , ca. 1837

Black and white chalk on grey wove paper

Sheet of studies of a nose, mouth and chin , ca. 1837

Pencil on off white wove paper

Sheet of studies of hands , ca. 1837

Sheet of studies of arms and hands , March 10th 1837

Napoleon Bonaparte lying in state , ca. 1837

Half length drawing of a young girl in profile , ca. 1837

Head and shoulders of an old man , ca. 1837

Black and white chalk on light brown wove paper

Three figures in historic dress in an interior , ca.1837

Drawings of antique statues in the British Museum collection , July 1843

Black chalk on cream wove paper - chalk rubbed out in places to create highlights

Design for an elaborate covered cup , 1843 or later

Study for 'The Last Trek' , 1894-1896

Pen and ink on thin, light green, wove paper

Squared up sketch for 'A Forerunner' , 1895-6

Pencil on tracing paper

Study for the portrait of Candida, Marchioness of Tweeddale , 1894 -1896

Black chalk drawing with white highlights on thick green/yellow paper

Arthur Hughes, portrait study for 'The Proscribed Royalist' , 1852

The Marble Faun

Study for 'The Last Trek' , 1895-6

Black and white chalk on thick green/yellow wove paper

Sketch for 'A Forerunner' and other drawings , 1896

Black and white chalk on straw board

Sketch for a three-quarter length portrait of a man , Probably 1870s

Black chalk on off-white wove card

A rook in flight - a study for 'Christmas Eve, 1887'

Pen and ink on buff-coloured card

Old Age , 1847-8

Pen and black ink on cream wove paper

Childhood , 1847-8

Sheet of sketches of heads and figures , ca. 1845

A tiger and a sleeping lion , late 1830s

Watercolour, with pencil drawing beneath, on cream wove paper

Preparatory drawings for 'Elgiva' , 1846 -1847

Infantryman carrying a pike , ca. 1838-1839

Pencil and watercolour on thick cream wove paper

Sketches of heads, soldiers and tigers , 1838 or later

Pencil and watercolour on cream wove paper

Drawings of sculpture and carvings in a church , ca. 1844

Pen and ink on thick, cream wove paper

A knight and an infantryman , ca.1840

Watercolour paint on cream wove paper

Cavalrymen conferring with a clergyman , ca.1840

Watercolour paint, over pencil outline, on thick cream wove paper

A Scene from Othello , 1846

Sketches of a couple fighting

Preparatory drawings for a portrait, possibly of Hugh Lupus Duke of Westminster , 1870s

Thick buff coloured wove paper

Bacchanale with bagpipes , ca. 1853

Photograph of a marble fireplace , ca. 1880

Battle scene , ca. 1843

Drawings of a child, possibly for 'Bubbles' , ca.1885

Chalk on thin beige wove paper

Drawings of a boy , 1891 or later

Black chalk on thick cream wove paper

The Apollo Belvedere , December 1841

Black and white chalk on brown wove paper

Study of two rooks for 'Christmas Eve 1887' , 1887-8

Pen and ink on buff-coloured wove card

The Pancrastinae , January 1842

Pencil and chalk on cream wove paper

A Woman Presenting a Petition to a Cavalier , 1841

Pencil on thick cream wove paper

Study of four rooks for 'Christmas Eve 1887'

Pen and ink with gouache, charcoal and pencil on thick buff coloured wove card

Preparatory drawing for 'The Ransom' , 1853 or later

Pencil on paper

The Parable of the Sower. , 1863

The Parable of the Leaven , 1863

The Lost Piece of Silver

The Pearl of Great Price , 1864

Works after Sir John Everett Millais in the RA Collection

After Sir John Everett Millais Bt. PRA

St.Agnes Eve. / Wood engraving by Dalziel after a design by J.E.Millais. Published in Poems by Alfred Tennyson / Moxon edition 1857.

A Lost Love / Wood engraving by the Dalziel Brothers after a design by J.E.Millais. Published in Once a Week December 3rd, 1859, illustrating a poem by R.A.B.

William Ewart Gladstone , 1881

Mixed-method engraving

St Bartholemew Wood engraving by the Dalziel Brothers after a design by John Everett Millais. Published in Once a Week 17th December 1859. p. 514.

Works associated with Sir John Everett Millais in the RA Collection

Attributed to Sir John Everett Millais Bt. PRA

Tracing of a medieval Florentine lady from Camille Bonnard's Costume Historique , pre-1849

Pen and ink and watercolour (?) paint on tracing paper

Tracing of a young woman in French medieval dress from Camille Bonnard's Costume Historique , pre-1849

Tracing of a medieval Milanese noblewoman from Camille Bonnard's Costume Historique , pre-1849

Tracing of a man in medieval Italian military dress from Camille Bonnard's Costume Historique , pre-1849

Pen and ink and watercolour (?) paint

Watercolour landscape with view of a town , 1840s

The Monastery Cook , 1839

On cream wove paper

Ralph W. Robinson

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. , ca.1889-1891

Platinotype print mounted on off-white card

From: Joseph Parkin Mayall

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. , ca. 1884

Photogravure

From: John & Charles Watkins

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. , fl. 1857-1876

Albumen print mounted on card with printed name

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. , ca.1857-1876

Edward Onslow Ford RA

Bust of Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, P.R.A. , 1896

Bronze bust on marble base

Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm Bt. RA

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt., P.R.A. , 1881-82

Bronze bust

Frank Holl RA

Portrait of Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, PRA , 1886

Charles West Cope RA

The Council of the Royal Academy selecting Pictures for the Exhibition, 1875 , 1876

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA

A copy of the RA Laws as relating to the Schools, annotated and with sketches by Alma-Tadema , c. 1880

Printed book with pencil annotations and sketches

Associated books

Good words - London: 1860-1906

The Royal Academy Album : a series of photographs from works of art in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, MDCCCLXXV - London: 1875

Alfred Tennyson, 1st baron Tennyson

Poems by Alfred Tennyson; illustrated by T. Crestwick, J. E. Millais, W. Holman Hunt, W. Mulready, J. C. Horsley, D. G. Rossetti, C. Stanfield, D. Maclise. - London: 1857

Thomas Moore

Irish Melodies by Thomas Moore; illustrated with engravings from drawings by eminent artists. - London: 1856

Associated archives

The Gifted Hand - drawings by Sir John Everett Millais in the Royal Academy's collection

Item RAA/PRE/5/2/346

J. Margaret Hadley, Parkside, Reigate, to Spielmann

Item SP/19/17

[copy] Spielmann, to Mrs Hadley

Item SP/19/16

Group caricature of a group of Academician painters, by Alfred Thompson

Item SP/6/41

John Everett Millais

Jun 8, 1829 - aug 13, 1896, artist highlights, slideshow auto-selected from multiple collections, sights and sounds of millais' love tragedy, discover this artist, related works from the web, the crown of love (1875), www.wikiart.org the crown of love, 1875 - john everett millais - wikiart.org, a huguenot, on st. bartholomew's day (1852), en.wikipedia.org a huguenot, on st. bartholomew's day - wikipedia, the blind girl (1856), en.wikipedia.org the blind girl - wikipedia, the black brunswicker (1860), www.wikidata.org the black brunswicker - wikidata, the boyhood of raleigh (1870), www.wikidata.org the boyhood of raleigh - wikidata, autumn leaves (1856), www.wikidata.org autumn leaves - wikidata, non angli sed angeli, www.alamy.com millais john everett - non angli sed angeli stock photo - alamy, the knight errant, victorianweb.org millais's “the knight errant” (1870) - the victorian web, pizarro seizing the inca of peru (1846), www.wikiart.org pizarro seizing the inca of peru, 1846 - john everett millais - wikiart ..., the vale of rest (1859), www.wikidata.org the vale of rest - wikidata, “man was not intended to live alone... marriage is the best cure for that wretched lingering over one's work. i think i must feel more settled than you all. i would immensely like to see you all married like myself and anchored.”, more artists, dante gabriel rossetti, edward burne-jones, frederic leighton, ford madox brown, william holman hunt, lawrence alma-tadema, more art movements, pre-raphaelite brotherhood, romanticism, 6,705 items, more mediums, 54,675 items, 52,729 items, 27,117 items, 32,241 items, 31,710 items, 45,509 items.

A Biography of Sir John Everett Millais, Bart., PRA, HRI, HRCA (1829-1896)

Christopher newall.

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His greatest paintings were perhaps his subjectless figurative pictures, The Blind Girl and Autumn Leaves , of the mid 1850s. Later he reverted to a more anecdotal style of subject picture and gave way to a tendency to paint winsome children in a style which, while it derives from Velazquez, is still over-sweet and sometimes coy. Millais was a remarkable draughtsman and illustrator; the series of drawings of modern life subjects which he did in 1853-4 reflect the moral crisis in which he found himself when he and Ruskin 's wife Effie fell in love.

In his later career Millais gained a great popular reputation and became very rich largely as a result of the lucrative sale of copyrights of his pictures to print publishers. He was made President of the Royal Academy after Leighton 's death in 1896, but died the same year.

Bibliography

Newall, Christopher. A Celebration of British and European Painting of the 19th and 20th Centuries .London: Peter Nahum, nd [1999?].

Peter Nahum Ltd, London has most generously given its permission to use in the Victorian Web information, images, and text from its catalogues, and this generosity has led to the creation of hundreds of the site's most valuable documents on painting, drawing, and sculpture. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with Peter Nahum Ltd. Readers should consult the website of Peter Nahum at the Leicester Galleries to obtain information about recent exhibitions and to order their catalogues. [ GPL ]

Last modified 14 May 2023

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John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, was born on June 8, 1829, in Southampton, Hampshire, England. Millais was a well-known painter and illustrator in England and one of the original founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. The PRB was an artistic movement with that took inspiration from the purity of the early Renaissance. The PRB embodied an unconventional–and often controversial–style.

Early Beginnings

In 1838, eleven-year-old Millais went to London. There he entered the Royal Academy schools where he went on to win every one of the academy prizes. Just ten years later, in 1848, Millais collaborated with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Together, they formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They named it the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood because they were fed up with the contemporary paintings and art which they believed was popularized due to the artist Raphael. All of the schools at this time followed this same, monotonous art form. Millais, Hunt and Rossetti were ready for a change.

Critiques and Praises

The famous novelist Charles Dickens criticized Millais’s work. Dickens found Millais’s painting, Christ in the House of His Parents (1850), to be blasphemous due to its “lack of idealization and seeming irreverence in the use of the mundane.”

During the 1850s, Millais created some of his best work. Essayist and critic John Ruskin and the famous author Théophile Gautier were big admirers of Millais’s The Return of the Dove to the Ark (1851). Eugène Delacroix praised The Order of Release (1853).

Personal Life

When Millais painted The Order of Release (1853),

The woman he painted, effie gray, was married to his friend,, john ruskin. despite being married for several years to ruskin,, effie was still a virgin. effie would later get an annulment from ruskin, and marry millais. millais and effie had 8 children..

Greatest Works

Millais’s Ophelia (1851-52) is among one of the most famous paintings in the entire PRB. Millais painted The Blind Girl (1956) which also gained quick popularity. The painting depicts “Victorian sentiment and technical facility.”

Artist’s Decline

Millais’s work declined significantly in the later years of his life. In 1863 he became a full academician, and with that title he purposely chose to change his style to be more popular and less controversial. Millais drew illustrations for George Dalziel’s Parables (1864), E. Moxon’s edition of Tennyson’s poems, Once a Week, Good Words, and other periodicals. In 1870 Millais started painting pure landscapes such as, Lingering Autumn (1890). Perthshire, a place where Millais often hunted and fished, was the inspiration for several of his landscape pieces.

During this period, other great portraits were created including those of william gladstone, alfred, lord tennyson, and cardinal newman., big milestones.

The mid to late 1880s proved to be a significant time for Millais.

In 1885 millais was named a baronet, and the following year, he was elected to be the president of the royal academy., john everett millais died on august 13, 1896, in london, england..

Barringer, T. J., Jason Rosenfeld, Alison Smith, Elizabeth Prettejohn, and Diane Waggoner. Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 2012. Print. John Everett Millais – Música Mendelssohn . YouTube . N.p., 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 1 May 2013.

Jason Rosenfeld Discusses John Everett Millais . Dir. Jason Rosenfeld. YouTube . N.p., 19 Apr. 2012. Web. 1 May 2013.

Millais, John Everett. Christ in the House of His Parents. 1850. Oil on canvas. BBC Your Paintings. Public Catalogue Foundation. Web. 1 May 2013.

Millais, John Everett. Lingering Autumn . 1890. Oil on canvas. BBC Your Paintings. Public Catalogue Foundation. Web. 1 May 2013.

Millais, John Everett. Ophelia . 1851-52. Oil on canvas. BBC Your Paintings. Public Catalogue Foundation. Web. 1 May 2013.

Millais, John Everett. The Order of Release . 1853. Oil on canvas. BBC Your Paintings. Public Catalogue Foundation. Web. 1 May 2013.

Millais, John Everett. The Return of the Dove to the Ark . 1851. Oil on canvas. BBC Your Paintings. Public Catalogue Foundation. Web. 1 May 2013.

“Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2013.

“Millais, Sir John Everett, 1st Baronet”. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online . Web. 1 May. 2013.

Contributor: Rebecca Sass

Victorian Era

From Georgian to Edwardian

John Everett Millais Detailed Biography

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, was an English painter and illustrator. He is revered as one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy and at the age of 11, he was the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, that was founded in 1848, was formed at his family home at 83 Gower Street in London. Millais became the most famous exponent of his style. During the mid-1850s, he was even moving away from the Pre-Raphaelite style to make a new and powerful art form of his own.

Table of Contents

John Everett Millais Biography

The later works published by Everett Millais were thoroughly successful. Thus Millais was one of the wealthiest artists of his day. The later works are now seen as having wider context and the advanced tendencies in the late nineteenth-century art forms.

The early twentieth century critics viewed the art forms through Modernism and his art productions seemed as wanting. Even Millais’ personal life played an important role in the development of his reputation.

His wife, Effie, was the wife of the critic John Ruskin, who had favored Millais’ work. Her promotion of Millais’ work helped secure commissions and expand social and intellectual circles.

Early Life of John Everett Millais

John Everett Millais was born on 8th June 1829, in Southampton, England. His father was John William Millais and his mother was Emily Mary Millais. He was from a prominent Jersey family, where most of his childhood was spent. John was influenced by his mother’s forceful personality and grew a keen interest in art and music.

She encouraged her John’s artistic creativity and the family relocated to London to help develop contacts at the Royal Academy of Art. John had even revealed later that he owed everything to his mother.

He earned a place at the Royal Academy schools due to his prodigious artistic talent. He met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt there, with whom he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Pre-Raphaelite Works

Millais did quite a controversial painting by depicting the realistic portrayal of the working class Holy Family found laboring in a carpentry shop in The Christ in the House of His Parents. The later works were much less controversial.

John Everett Millais Ophelia

A Huguenot got Millais a lot of success, which depicted a young couple who were going to separate because of religious conflicts. The early works were painted giving proper attention to detail. The painting of Ophelia was created with dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces by basing it on the integration of naturalistic elements.

John Guille Millais

John Millais married Effie in 1855 after her marriage to Ruskin had been annulled. They had eight children eventually with the youngest son as John Guille Millais. Effie’s younger sister Sophy Gray sat for several pictures by Millais, thus portraying their fond relationship.

Later Work by John Everett Millais

Millais began painting in a broader style after his marriage with Effie. Though it has been arguable that this was primarily to satisfy his growing family, many pointed out his connections with Albert Moore and Whistler and the influence on John Singer Sargent.

He proclaimed that he grew more confident as an artist, painting with greater boldness. He even recommended Velaquez and Rembrandt as the artists to be followed through his article ‘Thoughts on our art of Today’.

The paintings like The Eve of St. Agnes and also The Somnambulist show the connection between Millais and Whistler, whose work he greatly recommended.

Millais’ later works that were done after 1870 portray his reverence for great artists such as Velaquez and Joshua Reynolds. The most notable paintings of the period are the Boyhood of Raleigh, The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower and The Northwest Passage.

Millis even achieved great popularity with the paintings of children like Bubbles. The last project to be ever undertaken by Millais was to be a painting by the name of The Last Trek, which would depict a white hunter lying dead in the African veldt, where his body was being contemplated by two Africans.

Millais had become an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1853 and soon elected as a full member of the Academy and became an active participant. Queen Victoria made him a Baronet of Palace Gate in the parish of St. Mary Abbot, Kensington in July 1885. He was thus the first artist to be awarded the hereditary title.

Millais was elected as the President of the Royal Academy of Arts after the death of Lord Leighton in 1896. John Everett Millais died the same year from throat cancer. The Prince of Wales chaired a memorial that commissioned a statue of the artist after his death in 1896.

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John Everett Millais: A Biography Hardcover – January 1, 1999

• Print length 318 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Constable & Robinson Ltd
• Publication date January 1, 1999
• Dimensions 6.5 x 1 x 9.75 inches
• ISBN-10 0094785600
• ISBN-13 978-0094785601
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Constable & Robinson Ltd; First Edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 318 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0094785600
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0094785601
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.64 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.75 inches
• #11,892 in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers (Books)

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Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Millais, John Everett

Millais still retained his disinclination for ordinary studies, and received all his education (except in art) from his mother, who read to him continually. He wore his boyish costume of gouffred tunic and wide falling collar till long past the usual age, and for this reason was called 'the child' by his fellow-students at the academy—a name which stuck to him long afterwards. He was tall and slim, high-spirited and independent, though very delicate. He was fond of cricket and of fishing, and made many friends. As early as 1840 he was asked to breakfast by Samuel Rogers, and met Wordsworth, and in 1846 he stayed with his half-brother, Henry Hodgkinson, at Oxford, and was introduced to Wyatt, the dealer in art, at whose house he frequently stayed as a guest during the next three years. On a window in the room he occupied he painted in oils 'The Queen of Beauty' and 'The Victorious Knight.' Wyatt bought his picture of 'Cymon and Iphigenia' (now belonging to Mr. Standen), painted in 1847 for the Royal Academy, but not exhibited. To 1849 belongs a portrait by Millais (exhibited in 1850) of Wyatt and his grandchild. Other acquaintances made at Oxford were Mr. and Mrs. Combe of the Clarendon Press, with whom he became intimate, and Mr. Drury of Shotover Park. He earned money also, and from the age of sixteen defrayed the greater part of the household expenses in Gower Street, where he lived with his family. In 1845 he was engaged to paint small pictures and backgrounds for a dealer named Ralph Thomas for 100 l . a year. He recorded his delight ​ at receiving his first cheque (still preserved) by endorsing it with a drawing of himself. They fell out, and Millais threw his palette at Thomas, and so ended the connection for a while, but it was afterwards renewed (though not for long) at an increased salary of 150 l . a year.

In 1846 Millais exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time. The subject of his picture was 'Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru.' This was followed in 1847 by 'Elgiva seized by the Soldiers of Odo.' John (known as Lester) Wallack, the actor [see under Wallack, James William , ad fin .], who married Millais's sister, sat for Pizarro. In 1847 also he entered unsuccessfully into the competition at Westminster Hall for the decoration of the houses of parliament, sending an oil picture of 'The Widow's Mite' (ten feet seven inches by fourteen feet three inches), since cut up. He did not exhibit at the academy in 1848.

Down to this time his career had differed from those of other academy students only by its distinguished success, and his pictures had shown little if any divergence from the ordinary ideals and methods taught in the schools; but about the beginning of 1848 he and Mr. Holman Hunt, deeply conscious of the lifeless condition into which British art had fallen, determined to adopt a style of absolute independence as to art dogma and convention, which they called 'Pre-Raphaelitism.' The next to join the movement was Dante Gabriel Rossetti [q.v.], who at this time was struggling with the technical difficulties of painting under the instruction of Holman Hunt, but was unknown to Millais. The three met together at the Millaises' house in Gower Street, where Millais showed them engravings from the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and all agreed to 'follow' them. The result was the formation of the celebrated 'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,' consisting of seven members. There has been much dispute as to what were the precise principles of the brotherhood ; but, according to Millais, 'the Pre-Raphaelites had but one idea, to present on canvas what they saw in nature,' and to this idea he adhered from first to last. Another disputed point is the influence of Rossetti on Millais's earlier work. This was entirely denied by Millais himself; but it was probably greater than he knew, for Rossetti's picture of 'The Girlhood of Mary Virgin ' was clearly the fore-runner of Millais's 'Christ in the House of his Parents,' and there was a spirit of poetical romance in Millais's work while their closest intercourse lasted (1848-52) which slowly faded away afterwards. The intense intellectual and spiritual influence of Rossetti ore the brotherhood generally cannot be denied. He was the ruling spirit of their short-lived organ, 'The Germ' (2 parts, 1850), for which Millais made one or two sketches and an etching and wrote a story, though none of them appeared. (A copy of the etching will be found in 'British Contemporary Artists.') On the other hand Millais was very independent and impatient of control, and would not read the first volume of 'Modern Painters' (1841), in which principles like those practically followed by the Pre-Raphaelites were first recommended to young artists. It is also to be remembered that Rossetti was at this time a mere tyro in painting, whereas Millais was a trained artist, and that of love of nature and skill in expressing it Millais could learn nothing from Rossetti.

At all events it is quite certain that Mr. Holman Hunt and Millais were most intimately associated in all their views and in their practice. They had worked together in complete sympathy from the days of their studentship, and they together started the new movement. The depth of the gulf between it and the old is clearly seen if we compare the 'Pizarro' of 1846 with the 'Isabella' of 1849 a banquet scene from Keats's poem of 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil' founded on a story by Boccaccio. In this nearly all the characters were painted from his relatives and friends. Among them were three at least of the brotherhood, the two Rossettis, Dante and William, and Mr. F. G. Stephens, and it contains all the characteristics of 'Pre-Raphaelite' work most minute imitation of nature down to the smallest detail, all persons and objects studied directly from the originals, and disregard of composition, generalisation, and all convention. The tale was told with dramatic power, and the expression of the heads, with the exception of the lovesick Lorenzo, was excellent. Millais never again painted a composition of so many figures, or of greater patience and success in execution. The picture was bought by Mr. Windus, was for a time in the possession of Thomas Woolner [q.v.], the sculptor (and one of the brethren), and is now in the gallery of the corporation of Liverpool. It was exhibited in 1849.

Millais's next important picture was a supposed scene in Christ's childhood, treated as an incident in the ordinary life of a carpenter's family. It is usually known as 'The Carpenter's Shop,' or 'Christ in the House of his Parents;' but in the catalogue of the Royal Academy it had, in place of a title, a quotation from Zechariah xiii. 6. The boy has wounded the palm of his hand with a ​ nail. His mother kneels by him and kisses him. St. Joseph, St. Anne, and St. John, undistinguishable from ordinary human beings, play different parts in the little drama of sympathy, just as a carpenter's family might do any day in any country. They are all English in type. Such a treatment of a scene in the life of the Holy Family aroused great hostility. The 'Times' stigmatised it as 'revolting,' and its minute finish of detail as 'loathsome.' Violent attacks came from nearly all quarters, including 'Blackwood,' and even from Charles Dickens in 'Household Words,' who afterwards owned his mistake. Another picture of this year, 1850, 'Ferdinand lured by Ariel,' met with scarcely better reception from the critics, and was refused by the dealer for whom it was painted. Nevertheless, 'The Carpenter's Shop' was bought for 15(W. by a dealer named Farrer, and 'Ferdinand' by Mr. Ellison of Sudbrooke Holme, Lincolnshire, for the same sum. About this time Millais began to feel that the excessively minute handling which was one of the characteristics of the Pre-Raphaelites was a mistake (see William Bell Scott's Autobiographical Notes , i. 278), but little difference in this respect is to be noted in his work of the next few years. The most notable of these were : 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark,' and 'The Woodman's Daughter,' from a poem by Patmore, and ' Mariana of the Moated Grange ' (all exhibited in 1851); 'The Huguenot' and 'Ophelia' (1852) ; The Proscribed Royalist' and ' The Order of Release' (1853). 'The Return of the Dove,' though the girls who are receiving the bird were very plain, was exquisitely painted, and Ruskin wished to buy it ; but it was purchased by Mr. Combe for 150 guineas, who bequeathed it to the university of Oxford. The background of 'The Woodman's Daughter' was a wood near Oxford, and the strawberries which the squire's boy is offering to the labourer's daughter were purchased in Covent Garden—four for 5 s . 6 d. 'Mariana' was purchased by Mr. Windus, and now belongs to Mr. H. F. Makins. 'The Huguenot,' the figures of which were painted from Mr. Arthur (afterwards General) Lempriere and Miss Ryan, was bought by a dealer named White for 300 l . 'Ophelia' was a portrait of Miss Siddall (Mrs. D. G. Rossetti), and the scene was painted by the side of the Ewell at Kingston. For 'The Proscribed Royalist' Mr. Arthur Hughes, the well-known painter, sat, Miss Ryan again appearing in the female figure. The scene was a little wood near Hayes in Kent. In 'The Order of Release' the female figure was painted from Mrs. Ruskin, who was afterwards to become his wife. During these years Millais was wont to spend much time in the country to paint his backgrounds, lodging at farmhouses and cottages, in company with his brother, Mr. Holman Hunt, and Charles Allston Collins. Having settled upon the piece of landscape he meant to introduce, he would paint it day by day with exact fidelity and almost microscopic minuteness. Such backgrounds, not only in his pictures, but those of Holman Hunt and their followers, form a very distinct feature of the strict 'Pre-Raphaelite' period. For literal truth to nature's own colours and rendering of intricate detail, those by Millais stand almost alone, especially the river scene in 'Ophelia.'

All this time Millais was fighting hard for his new principles of art, and suffered much from the antagonism of critics, dealers, and others, including many artists of the older school ; but he managed to sell his pictures in spite of all, and gradually achieved popularity also. With the exhibition of 'The Huguenot' the fight may be said to have been won, as far at least as the public were concerned. Its sentiment, its refinement of expression, and thorough execution appealed to nearly all who saw it. But Millais and the Pre-Raphaelite cause had many supporters and sympathisers, the most important of whom was John Ruskin [q.v.Suppl.], who expressed his enthusiasm in letters to the 'Times' and in his pamphlet called 'Pre-Raphaelitism' (1851). Millais first met Ruskin in this year, and two years afterwards he was joined by Ruskin and his wife. at Wellington, the Trevelyans' house in Northumberland, and went to Scotland with them. He made several architectural designs for Ruskin, and in 1854 painted a portrait of him standing by the river Finlass, which was bought by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland [q. v. Suppl.] In the autumn of 1853 he took to hunting with John Leech [q. v.], and in November of the same year he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. By this time the brotherhood, whose meetings had always been few and far between, had died a natural death, and Millais had soon to lose the companionship of Mr. Holman Hunt, who went to Syria in February 1854. In this year Millais did not exhibit at the Royal Academy, but in 1855 he sent three pictures, including 'The Rescue,' a scene from a fire in a modern town house, with a frantic mother seizing her two children from the arms of a fireman. This was painted in honour of brave firemen, and was a new departure, for the scene was completely modern, and the conception was entirely his own. The mother was painted ​ from Mrs. Nassau Senior, the sister of Tom Hughes [q. v. Suppl.] author of 'Tom Brown's School Days.' Ruskin, in his notes on the principal pictures in the academy, declared it to be 'the only great picture exhibited,' adding that it was 'very great,' and that ' the immortal element is in it to the full.' In the great Paris Exhibition of 1855 Millais was represented by 'The Order of Release,' 'Ophelia,' and ' The Return of the Dove.' This was the year of Leighton's 'Cimabue,' and the two painters met for the first time. In July of this year (1855) Millais married Euphemia Chalmers, the eldest daughter of George Gray of Bowerswell, Perth, who had obtained a decree of the 'nullity' of her marriage with John Ruskin. They went to live at Annat Lodge, near Bowerswell. In the garden of this residence was painted the celebrated picture of 'Autumn Leaves,' which was exhibited in 1856 with 'Peace Concluded, 1856,' The Blind Girl,' 'L'Enfant du Regiment,' and a 'Portrait of a Gentleman.' 'Autumn Leaves' represents four girls heaping up dead leaves in a warm twilight or afterglow ; 'Peace Concluded,' a wounded officer and his wife, with their children playing with animals out of a Noah's ark a cock, a bear, a lion, and a turkey, symbolical of the nations engaged in the late war in the Crimea. In his 'Notes' Ruskin strongly praised 'Autumn Leaves' and 'Peace Concluded;' indeed, his praise of the latter was extravagant. Of 'Autumn Leaves' he said it 'is by much the most poetical work the painter has yet conceived, and also, as far as I know, the first instance existing of a perfectly painted twilight,' and of both he prophesied that they would 'rank in future among the world's best masterpieces.' 'The Blind Girl' contained two figures the blind girl and her companion, a younger girl, resting on a bank beside a common. The blind girl, with red hair and a concertina, is not beautiful, but the group is pathetic from its very truth and simplicity. The background one of the best the artist ever painted represents the common and village of Icklesham, near Winchelsea. 'L'Enfant du Regiment,' now called ' The Random Shot,' is supposed to be an incident in the French Revolution, and represents a wounded child lying on a soldier's cloak in a church. The tomb on which the cloak is spread was painted from one in Icklesham church.

In the spring of 1857 Millais took lodgings in Savile Row. His studio in Langham Chambers was shared with his friend, J. D. Luard, from 1853 to 1860, when Luard died. The principal pictures exhibited in 1857 were 'Sir Isumbras at the Ford' and 'The Escape of a Heretic.' The knight is old, in golden armour, mounted on a black horse, and is bearing with him two poor children across the river. In front of him a girl is seated, and a boy clings to him from behind. Behind, under a brilliant evening sky, is a landscape composed from the Bridge of Eden and the range of the Ochills, with a tower painted from old Elcho Castle. On the further bank are two nuns.

The comparative freedom with which he was now painting offended Ruskin, who devoted to 'Sir Isumbras' several pages of stern reproof, declaring, in his 'Notes' for 1857, that the change in the artist's manner from the years of 'Ophelia' and 'Mariana' 'is not only Fall—it is catastrophe.' This picture was very cleverly caricatured in a lithograph by Mr. F. Sandys, in which the horse is turned to a donkey branded J. R., the knight into Millais, while Dante Rossetti and Holman Hunt take the places of the girl and the boy. 'Sir Isumbras' was bought by Charles Reade, the novelist, and is now in the possession of Mr. R. V. Benson, at whose request the artist repainted the horse and its trappings. Ruskin was equally severe on 'The Escape of the Heretic' on account of its subject and the violence of its expression. Millais's next important pictures were 'Apple Blossoms' or 'Spring,' and 'The Vale of Rest,' which were exhibited in 1859 (he sent no picture to the academy in 1858). The subject of 'The Vale of Rest' (two nuns in a convent garden, one digging a grave) had occurred to him during his honeymoon, and 'Apple Blossoms' was commenced in 1856. The first was distinguished by its impressive sentiment and the background of oaks and poplars seen against an evening sky. The face of one of the nuns was of repellent ugliness, and was repainted in 1862 from a Miss Lane. 'The Vale of Rest' is now in the Tate Gallery. Both pictures were painted at Bowerswell. In 'Apple Blossoms' some beautiful girls are sporting in an orchard under boughs of brilliant apple blossom, painted with great force and freedom. The central figure is Miss Georgiana Moncrieff (Lady Dudley) ; Lady Forbes, two sisters-in-law, and a model sat for the others. Ruskin extolled the power with which these pictures were painted, and called 'The Vale of Rest' a 'great picture,' but still insisted on the deterioration of the artist. At this time Millais still seems to have suffered much from the animosity of critics and others, and to have felt anxiety about the future ; but he sold all his pictures at good prices, and in 1860 took a house in Bryanston Square, ​ from which he moved to 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, in 1862. In 1860 he exhibited 'The Black Brunswicker,' a parting scene between an officer and his fiancee before the battle of Waterloo. The officer was painted from a private in the life guards, and the lady from Miss Kate Dickens (Mrs. Perugini), the daughter of Charles Dickens. The picture was less refined in conception than his other historic love scenes, 'The Huguenot' and 'Proscribed Royalist,' but it was painted with great skill, and may be said to terminate the period of transition from his first or Pre-Raphaelite manner, and that of complete breadth and freedom. Other changes besides that of style begin to be more marked. He became less sedulous in his search for subjects, less romantic in his feeling, more content to paint the life about him, without drawing much upon his imagination, or even his faculty for refined selection. The portrait element, always strong in his work, became stronger, and his family furnished ready subjects for many pictures. At the same time his invention was much employed in illustration, especially of Trollope's novels, 'Orley Farm,' 'Framley Parsonage,' 'The Small House at Allington,' 'Rachel Ray,' and 'Phineas Finn,' for which he made eighty-seven drawings, beginning with 'Framley Parsonage ' in the 'Cornhill Magazine.' Trollope was one of his friends at this time with Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, and John Leech. From 1860 to 1869 he was continually employed in designs to be cut upon wood for Bradbury & Evans, Macmillan, Hurst & Blackett, Chapman & Hall, Smith, Elder, & Co., Dalziel Bros., Mr. Gambart, Moxon (the illustrated edition of Tennyson). He was one of the most prolific and the cleverest of all the book illustrators of this period, so celebrated for its revival of woodcutting, and one or more cuts from his designs are to be found in 'Once a Week,' 'The Cornhill,' 'Punch,' 'The Illustrated London News,' 'Good Words,' 'London Society,' and many books. Later in life (1879) he illustrated 'Barry Lyndon' for the edition de luxe of Thackeray's works. He also made many water-colour replicas of his pictures. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1863. Among the most celebrated historical and poetical pictures of this period (1860-70) were 'The Eve of St. Agnes' (1863), 'Romans leaving Britain' and 'The Evil One sowing Tares' (1865), 'Jephthah' (1867), 'Rosalind and Celia' (1868), 'A Flood,' 'The Boyhood of Raleigh,' and 'The Knight Errant' (1870). The subject of 'The Eve of St. Agnes' is taken from Keats's poem. The heroine is his wife, and the moonlit room in which 'her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees' is at Knole House, Kent. It was painted in five days and a half, in December 1862, and is one of the finest of his works. It now belongs to Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A. 'The Knight Errant' is remarkable from the fine execution of a full-length life-size female figure, the only one to be found in the artist's works. Of the others the most successful, perhaps, were 'The Evil One sowing Tares,' a version in oils of one of a fine series of designs for ' The Parables of Our Lord,' published by Bradbury & Evans, 'A Flood' (a child carried in its wooden cradle down the swollen stream), and 'The Boyhood of Raleigh,' in which two boys (his own sons Everett and George) are listening to the strange tales of a sailor returned from the Spanish main. The newest element in his work of this period was supplied from his own nursery, which afforded subjects for many very popular pictures, like 'My First Sermon,' 'My Second Sermon,' 'Sleeping,' 'Waking,' 'Sisters,' 'The First Minuet,' and 'The Wolfs Den.'

Portraits of other children were also among his greatest successes, like 'Leisure Hours,' the daughters of Sir John Pender with a bowl of goldfish, and 'Miss Nina Lehmann' (Lady Campbell). Most of his pictures were now single figures, with more or less sentiment, like 'Stella' and 'Vanessa,' 'The Gambler's Wife,' 'The Widow's Mite,' and 'Swallow, Swallow.' A more important composition, 'Pilgrims to St. Paul's' (Greenwich pensioners before Nelson's tomb), appealed to national feeling. Technically he had reached full maturity, evidently exulting in his command over his materials and indulging occasionally in a rivalry with the broadest style of Velazquez, as in ' Vanessa,' and 'A Souvenir of Velazquez,' his diploma picture. Belonging to this period, though not exhibited till 1871, was the grandest of his biblical pictures called 'Victory, Lord,' representing Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses on the top of the hill (Exodus xvii. 12).

While at work no one worked harder than Millais, but no one enjoyed his holidays more, or was more convinced of the importance of long and thorough ones. Every year he spent some months in the country, usually in Scotland, where he could indulge his love of shooting and salmon fishing. Most, if not all, of his pure landscapes were also painted there. In 1856 he took the manse of Brig-o'-Turk in Glenfinlas, and in 1860 the shooting of Kincraig, Inverness-shire, with Colonel Aitkin. In 1865 ​ he was shooting with Sir William Harcourt near Inverary, and afterwards visited Florence and Italy in company with Sir William and his wife, and in 1868 he was shooting again with Sir William and with Sir Edwin Landseer, and went with Mr. Frith to Paris, where they made the acquaintance of Rosa Bonheur.

'Chill October,' his first exhibited pure landscape, afterwards bought by Lord Armstrong, was at the academy in 1871, and was painted in the open air from a backwater of the Tay just below Kinfauns, near Perth. It was followed by 'Scotch Firs' and 'Winter Fuel,' painted in 1874, 'The Fringe of the Moor' (1875), 'Over the Hills and Far Away' and 'The Sound of many Waters' (1876), all of which were equally remarkable for their truth to nature and fine execution, but they were without the pathetic sentiment of 'Chill October.' It was to portrait and landscape that he devoted himself mainly after 1870, and to single figures of children and pretty girls under fancy titles like Cherry Ripe,' 'Little Miss Muffet,' 'Cuckoo,' 'Pomona,' 'Olivia,' and many more which were very popular in engravings and in coloured prints for the illustrated newspapers. None of these paintings were perhaps more beautiful or popular than 'Sweetest eyes were ever seen,' 'Caller Herrin',' and 'Cinderella,' for which Miss Beatrice Buxton sat. Inspired by a stronger sentiment were 'The North- West Passage' (1874), 'The Princes in the Tower' (1878), The Princess Elizabeth' (1879), and two illustrations of Scott, 'Effie Deans' and 'The Master of Ravenswood,' painted for Messrs. Agnew in 1877 and 1878. 'The North- West Passage' represents a determined old mariner (a portrait of Edward John Trelawny [q.v.]) in a room overlooking the sea and strewn with charts. He listens to a young woman who is reading some tale of Arctic exploration. The artist never painted a finer head than that of the sailor, and the execution throughout is so fine that the picture is regarded by some as his masterpiece. 'A Yeoman of the Guard' (1877), with his age-worn face and uniform of scarlet and gold, is as strong in character, and perhaps the artist's most splendid effort as a colourist. It was, however, as a portrait painter that he added most to his great reputation during the last twenty-five years of his life. Among his most celebrated sitters were the Marquises of Salisbury, Hartington (Duke of Devonshire), and Lorne (Duke of Argyll), the Earls of Shaftesbury, Beaconsfield, and Rosebery, Lord Tennyson, W. E. Gladstone, John Bright, Sir Charles Russell (Lord Russell of Killowen), Cardinal Newman, George Grote, Sir William Sterndale Bennett, Sir James Paget, Sir Henry Thompson, Thomas Carlyle, Wilkie Collins, Sir Henry Irving, J. C. Hook, R.A., and Du Maurier, one of the most intimate of all his friends. All these portraits are lifelike and powerful, giving the very presence of the originals, and inspiring even their clothes with individuality. He was never more successful than in realising the grand head and keen expression of W. E. Gladstone, whom he painted in 1879, 1885, and 1890. He drew Charles Dickens after his death. He was on very friendly terms with Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Rosebery, and indeed with nearly all his sitters.

Among his best portraits of ladies may be mentioned 'Hearts are Trumps' (the three Misses Armstrong), Mrs. Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Bischoffsheim, Mrs. F. H. Myers, Mrs. Stibbard (his wife's sister), Mrs. Jopling, the Duchess of Westminster, and Lady Campbell. To his portraits of children already mentioned may be added Miss Dorothy Thorpe, Lady Peggy Primrose (afterwards Countess of Crewe), and the Princess Marie of Edinburgh, which belonged to Queen Victoria.

In 1875 Millais took a trip to Holland with some of his wife's family, and was greatly impressed by the masterpieces of Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Van der Heist. In 1878 Millais was represented at the Paris Exhibition by 'Chill October,' 'A Yeoman of the Guard,' 'Madam Bischoffsheim,' 'Hearts are Trumps,' and 'The Bride of Lammermoor,' which greatly increased his reputation in France, and he was made an officer of the legion of honour. In this year came the greatest sorrow of his life in the loss of his second son, George, who had nearly completed his twenty-first year. In 1879 he left Cromwell Place for a house built for him at Palace Gate from the designs of Philip Charles Hardwick, where he remained till he died. In 1880 he painted his own portrait for the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. He still paid his annual visit to Scotland, and in 1881 took a house at Murthly, Little Dunkeld, Perthshire, with good fishing and shooting. At Murthly or its neighbourhood all his other landscapes were painted : 'Murthly Moss,' 'Murthly Water,' 'Dew-drenched Furze,' 'Lingering Autumn,' and others. In 1881 a small exhibition of his pictures was held by the Fine Art Society. On 16 July 1885, at Gladstone's suggestion, he was created a baronet, ​ and among his other honours were honorary degrees at the universities of Oxford (9 June 1880) and Durham. He was an associate of the Institute of France, an honorary member of the Royal Scottish and Royal Hibernian academies, a member of the academies of Vienna, Belgium, Antwerp, and of St. Luke, Rome, and San Fernando, Madrid ; was an officer of the order of Leopold, of the order of St. Maurice, and of the Prussian order, 'Pour le Merite.' In 1886 a large collection of his works was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery.

In 1891 his tenancy of Murthly expired, and he took a shooting with residence at Newmill, which was burnt down in January 1892. About this time his health began to fail. After a bad attack of influenza he was troubled with a swelling in his throat, and suffered much from depression. He still, however, worked whenever he could, and executed with enjoyment several pictures, including 'St. Stephen,' 'A Disciple,' and 'Speak ! Speak !' which was purchased out of the Chantrey bequest. The admirable portraits of Mr. John Hare the actor and Sir Richard Quain also belong to his last years. The last subject picture exhibited by him was 'The Forerunner' (St. John Baptist), which was painted as well as ever, though somewhat trivial in motive.

In 1895, in consequence of the illness of the president, Sir Frederic (afterwards Lord) Leighton [q. v. Suppl.], he was called upon to preside at the Royal Academy banquet, a task he accomplished with great difficulty, owing to the weakness of his voice. On the death of Lord Leighton, on 25 Jan. 1896, he was unanimously elected to succeed him in the presidential chair, but he did not live long to enjoy the honour. He gradually failed, and died of cancer in the throat on 13 Aug. 1896, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral on the 20th. He left a widow and six children ; Lady Millais died on 23 Dec. 1897 of the same disease ; a pencil drawing by herself of Millais's portrait of her is given in Millais's ' Life,' i. 218, and another portrait of her drawn by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., is the frontispiece of the second volume. Millais's eldest son Everett, who had succeeded to the baronetcy, died on 7 Sept. 1897. The present baronet is Sir John Everett Millais, son of the second baronet.

Notwithstanding the opposition he had to conquer as a Pre-Raphaelite, Millais's career was one of almost continuous success and prosperity, and perhaps there is no greater proof of his popularity than the number (over a hundred) of his pictures which were separately engraved on steel. The winter exhibition of the Royal Academy 1898 was entirely devoted to his works.

It is too early to fix precisely the position of Millais as an artist, but there is no doubt that he was one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century, and that he did more than any other of his generation to infuse a new and healthy life into British art. There was nothing of the idealist or visionary in his designs, and he had not a great imagination ; but he could paint what he saw with a force and a truth which have seldom been excelled, and his intense love of nature and of his kind tilled his work with life and poetry.

As a man Millais was frank, manly, and genial, not over-refined, but devoid of affectation. Though of no great intellectual power, he had a strong fund of common sense, and, if not a great reader, was fond of poetry (especially Tennyson and Keats), of the best fiction, and of books of travel, and he could write graceful and humorous verses. In manner and appearance he resembled a country gentleman rather than an artist. He was devoted to his art, but not blind to the advantages of success and prosperity. He was the life of his own family, and regarded with affection by a very large and distinguished circle of acquaintance ; but he did not care for ordinary social gatherings, and preferred to spend his evenings at the Garrick Club, where he was sure to meet a number of congenial friends. In person he was very handsome, his face (which in his youth Rossetti described as that ot an angel) retained great beauty throughout life, and his figure grew well-knit and strong. His fine presence and cheery voice made themselves felt wherever he went, and there were few who knew him well who would not echo the words of Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A., who wrote of him as 'one of the kindest, noblest, most beautiful and lovable men I ever knew or ever hope to know.'

Besides the portrait of Millais which was painted by himself for the Uffizi Gallery, there are portraits of him by John Philip in 1841, by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., in 1871, and by Sir Henry Thompson, bart., in 1881. These, with sketches of him by his brother, W. H. Millais, John Leech, and others, are reproduced in J. G. Millais's 'Life and Letters' (1899).

The following works of Millais are to be found in public galleries. National Gallery, Trafalgar Square : 'Portrait of W. E. Gladstone' (1879) and 'A Yeoman of the Guard.' National Gallery of British Art : ​ ‘Ophelia,’ ‘The Vale of Rest,’ ‘The Knight Errant,’ ‘The North-West Passage,’ ‘Mercy,’ ‘St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572,’ ‘Saint Stephen,’ ‘A Disciple,’ ‘Speak! Speak!,’ ‘The Order of Release, 1746,’ and ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh.’ Victoria and Albert Museum: ‘Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru’ and ‘Lord Lytton.’ The National Portrait Gallery: ‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ ‘Thomas Carlyle,’ ‘Wilkie Collins,’ and ‘Leech.’ Oxford University Gallery: ‘The Return of the Dove’ and ‘Portrait of Thomas Combe.’ Manchester Corporation Gallery: ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘A Flood,’ ‘Victory, O Lord,’ ‘Winter Fuel,’ and ‘Bishop Fraser.’ Birmingham Art Gallery: ‘The Huguenot’ (1856), ‘The Widow's Mite,’ and ‘The Blind Girl.’ Holloway College: ‘Princes in the Tower’ and ‘Princess Elizabeth.’ Liverpool Art Gallery: ‘Isabella,’ ‘The First Minuet,’ and ‘The Martyr of the Solway.’ St. Bartholomew's Hospital: ‘Sir James Paget’ and ‘Luther Holden.’ University of London: ‘George Grote.’ British and Foreign Bible Society: ‘Lord Shaftesbury.’ University of Glasgow: ‘Dr. Caird.’ Corporation of Oldham: ‘T. O. Barlow, R.A.’

[Life &c. by J. G. Millais, 1899; Art Annual, 1886 (memoir by Sir Walter Armstrong); Cat. of Grosvenor Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1886 (F. G. Stephens); Chambers's Encyclopædia (art. ‘Pre-Raphaelitism’, by W. Holman Hunt); Royal Academy Cat., Winter, 1898; Cat. of Fine Art Society, 1881 (A. Lang); Holman Hunt's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1905; Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters, ed. W. M. Rossetti ; Cat. National Gallery of British Art; Spielmann's Millais and his Works; Sir W. B. Richmond's Leighton, Millais, &c.; J. B. Payne's The Pedigree of the Family of Millais; Ruskin's Notes on Royal Academy Exhibitions, Pre-Raphaelitism, and Modern Painters; Autobiographical Notes of William Bell Scott; Memoirs of Coventry Patmore; Frith's Reminiscences.]

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