Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA (June 8, 1829 – August 13, 1896) was a British painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Life and work

Millais (pronounced Mih-lay) was born in Southampton in 1829, of a prominent Jersey-based family. His prodigious artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy schools at the unprecedented age of eleven. While there, he met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti with whom he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Known as the 'PRB') in September 1848 in his family home on Gower Street, off Bedford Square.

Pre-Raphaelite works

Millais' Christ In The House Of His Parents (1850) was highly controversial because of its realistic portrayal of a working class Holy Family labouring in a messy carpentry workshop. Later works were also controversial, though less so. Millais achieved popular success with A Huguenot (1852), which depicts a young couple about to be separated because of religious conflicts. He repeated this theme in many later works.

All these early works were painted with great attention to detail, often concentrating on the beauty and complexity of the natural world. In paintings such as Ophelia (1852) Millais created dense and elaborate pictorial surfaces based on the integration of naturalistic elements. This approach has been described as a kind of "pictorial eco-system".

This style was promoted by the critic John Ruskin, who had defended the Pre-Raphaelites against their critics. Millais' friendship with Ruskin introduced him to Ruskin's wife Effie. Soon after they met she modelled for his painting The Order of Release. As Millais painted Effie they fell in love. Despite having been married to Ruskin for several years, Effie was still a virgin. Her parents realized something was wrong and she filed for an annulment. In 1856, after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled, Effie and John Millais married. He and Effie eventually had eight children.

Later works

After his marriage, Millais began to paint in a broader style, which was condemned by Ruskin as "a catastrophe". It has been argued that this change of style resulted from Millais' need to increase his output to support his growing family. Unsympathetic critics such as William Morris accused him of "selling out" to achieve popularity and wealth. His admirers, in contrast, pointed to the artist's connections with Whistler and Albert Moore, and influence on John Singer Sargent. Millais himself argued that as he grew more confident as an artist, he could paint with greater boldness. In his article "Thoughts on our art of Today" (1888) he recommended Velázquez and Rembrandt as models for artists to follow.

Paintings such as The Eve of St. Agnes and The Somnambulist clearly show an ongoing dialogue between the artist and Whistler, whose work Millais strongly supported. Other paintings of the late 1850s and 1860s can be interpreted as anticipating aspects of the Aesthetic Movement. Many deploy broad blocks of harmoniously arranged colour and are symbolic rather than narratival.

Later works, from the 1870s onwards demonstrate Millais' reverence for old masters such as Joshua Reynolds and Velázquez. Many of these paintings were of an historical theme and were other examples of Millais' talent. Notable among these are The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878) depicting the Princes in the Tower, The Northwest Passage (1874) and the Boyhood of Raleigh (1871). Such paintings indicate Millais' interest in subjects connected to Britain's history and expanding empire.

His last project was to be a painting depicting a white hunter lying dead in the African veldt, his body contemplated by two indifferent Africans. This fascination with wild and bleak locations is also evident in his many landscape paintings of this period, which usually depict difficult or dangerous terrain. The first of these, Chill October (1870) was painted in Perth, near his wife's family home. Many others were painted elsewhere in Perthshire, near Dunkeld and Birnam, where Millais rented grand houses each autumn in order to hunt and fish. Millais also achieved great popularity with his paintings of children, notably Bubbles (1886) – famous, or perhaps notorious, for being used in the advertising of Pears soap – and Cherry Ripe.

Illustrations

Millais was also very successful as a book illustrator, notably for the works of Anthony Trollope and the poems of Tennyson. His complex illustrations of the parables of Jesus were published in 1864. His father-in-law commissioned stained-glass windows based on them for a church in Perth. He also provided illustrations for magazines such as Good Words. In 1869 he was recruited as an artist for the newly founded weekly newspaper The Graphic.

Academic career

Millias was elected as an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1853, and was soon elected as a full member of the Academy, in which he was a prominent and active participant. He was granted a baronetcy in 1885, the first artist to be honoured with a hereditary title. After the death of Frederic Leighton in 1896, Millais was elected President of the Royal Academy, but he died later in the same year from throat cancer. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

See also

• List of Pre-Raphaelite paintings - including John Everett Millais
• English school of painting
• British art
• List of British painters

Other notable work

The Blind Girl is in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru is in Victoria & Albert Museum
The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower is in the Picture Gallery of Royal Holloway College

Gallery

1) - Isabella (1849)	2) - A Huguenot on St Bartholomew's Day (1852)	3) - Christ In The House Of His Parents (1850)	4) - Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1852)
5) - The Order of Release (1853)	6) - The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 (1853)	7) - The Rescue (1855)	8) - Peace Concluded, 1856 (1856)
9) - Autumn Leaves (1856)	10) - The Blind Girl (1856)	11) - Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857)	12) - The Eve of Saint Agnes (1863)
13) - Esther (1865)	14) - Jephthah (1867)	15) - Vanessa (1868)	16) - Victory O Lord! (1871)
17) - The Northwest Passage (1878)	18) - Cherry Ripe (1879)	19) - Bubbles (1886)	20)- Portrait of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery
21) - A Jersey Lily: Portrait of Lillie Langtry	22) - The Grey Lady (1888)	23) - The Pearl of Great Price, illustration from The Parables of Our Lord	24) - Effie Deans

Sources

• Daly, G (1989). Pre-Raphaelites in love. New York: Ticknor & Fields. OCLC: 18463706. ISBN 0899194508. 

Further reading

• Campbell-Johnston, R. "Master of Victorian values", Visual Arts, The Times, 2007-09-25. Retrieved on 2007-09-24. 

External links

• Millais,a book examining Millais' varied career
• Classic Reproductions Oil-on-canvas reproductions
• ArtRenewal.org gallery
• National Museums Liverpool important Millais collection
• Millais's Ophelia in focus on Tate Online
• John Everett Millais in the "History of Art"

Honorary titles
Preceded by Frederic, Lord Leighton	President of the Royal Academy February–August 1896	Succeeded by Sir Edward Poynter
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New creation	Baronet (of Palace Gate and St Quen) 1885–1896	Succeeded by Everett Millais