UC-NRLF 
 
 SB ESS 
 
{National Gallery. 
 A YEOMAN OF THE GUARD. 
 
Bell's Miniature Series of Painters 
 
 SIR JOHN EVERETT 
 
 MILLAIS 
 
 BY A. L. BALDRY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS 
 1908 
 
M663 
 
 First Published, December, 1902. 
 Reprinted, December, 1907. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIFE OF THE ARTIST i 
 
 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD 5 
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS 12 
 
 LAST YEARS 16 
 
 THE ART OF MILLAIS 22 
 
 OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 40 
 
 THE CHIEF WORKS OF MILLAIS IN PUBLIC 
 
 GALLERIES, ETC 59 
 
 39537 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TO FACE 
 PAGE 
 
 A YEOMAN OF THE GUARD . Frontispiece 
 
 CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF His PARENTS 6 
 
 A SOUVENIR OF VELAZQUEZ 12 
 
 THE VALE OF REST 26 
 
 OPHELIA 44 
 
 AUTUMN LEAVES 46 
 
 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE 52 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 56 
 
SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 A LTHOUGH John Everett Millais was born, 
 jL\. on June 8,1829, at Portland Place, South- 
 ampton, his father was an inhabitant of Jersey, 
 and a member of a family which had been settled 
 in that island from a date anterior to the Norman 
 conquest. The first five years of the child's life 
 were spent in Jersey, but in 1835 ne was taken by 
 his parents to Dinan, in Brittany, where he began, 
 by his sketches of the scenery of the place and 
 the types of the people, to give the first convinc- 
 ing proofs of the remarkable artistic capacity 
 that was in him. These early efforts were so 
 surprising, and attracted so much attention out- 
 side his family circle, that when he was not more 
 than nine years old he was brought to London 
 for an expert opinion on his chances in the pro- 
 fession for which he seemed predestined. The 
 President of the Royal Academy, Sir Martin 
 i B 
 
2 SIR JOHN IvHLLAIS 
 
 Archer Shee. was consulted, and his encouraging 
 declaration, that "Nature had provided for the 
 boy's success," decided the future of the young 
 artist, who was at once allowed to begin serious 
 study. 
 
 In 1838 he entered the drawing-school in 
 Bloomsbury which was carried on by Henry 
 Sass, and regarded as the best available place 
 for the training of budding genius. In the 
 same year he took the silver medal of the Society 
 of Arts, for a drawing from the antique, and 
 caused quite a sensation when he appeared, at 
 the distribution of the prizes, to receive his award 
 from the Duke of Sussex, who was presiding. 
 The surprise of the spectators is said to have been 
 unbounded when " Mr. Millais " came forward, 
 a small child in a pinafore, to answer to his 
 name, and even the officials at first found it hard 
 to believe that he could be really the winner of 
 the medal. 
 
 For two years he remained under the tuition 
 of Mr. Sass, and, helped by his teaching and by 
 a good deal of work from the casts in the British 
 Museum, the boy developed so rapidly that 
 when he was only eleven years old he gained 
 admission to the Royal Academy Schools, the 
 youngest student, it is said, that has ever been 
 
HIS LIFE 3 
 
 received into them. His career there was a 
 series of successes. For six years he laboured 
 indefatigably, and plainly proved his ability by 
 taking prize after prize, beginning with a silver 
 medal in 1843, and ending, in 1847, with the 
 gold medal for a historical picture, The Tribe of 
 Benjamin seizing the Daughters of Shiloh. 
 
 Subjects of this type seem at that time to have 
 attracted him strongly, and to have occupied a 
 great deal of his attention, for in 1846 he had 
 painted, and exhibited at the Academy, Pizarro 
 seizing the Inca of Peru, which is now in the 
 South Kensington Museum, and in the following 
 year another study of violent action, Elgiva 
 seized by Order of Archbishop Odo. To 1847 
 also belongs the great design, The Widow 
 bestowing her Mite, for the Westminster Hall 
 competition, a canvas fourteen feet long by ten 
 feet high, covered with life-size figures. Such 
 an effort speaks well for the energy and ambition 
 of a lad of eighteen, who could within the space 
 of a few months carry out so vast an undertak- 
 ing in addition to the Elgiva, and his gold 
 medal picture. 
 
 So far his progress had been, from the point of 
 view of his elder contemporaries, very promising 
 and satisfactory. He had proved himself to be 
 
4 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 possessed of unusual gifts; and apparently 
 historical art was to have in him an exponent of 
 rather a rare type, a painter who would carry on 
 its traditions with some degree of vitality. But 
 really he had only been feeling his way, and, not 
 having had time as yet to analyse his inclinations, 
 he had temporarily accepted, with youthful 
 imitativeness, the precepts of his teachers and 
 fellow-students. It did not take him long to 
 discover that he was on the wrong track, and to 
 decide that there was in another direction a far 
 better opportunity for the assertion of his own 
 independent convictions. 
 
 About the middle of the year 1848, he, and 
 his friends Rossetti and Holman Hunt, inspired 
 partly by the example of Ford Madox Brown, 
 and partly by their own study of the works of 
 the Italian Primitives who, before the time of 
 Raphael, had laboured with devout and simple 
 naturalism, decided that the principles which 
 guided the early masters were being deliberately 
 ignored by the modern men. So these three 
 youths agreed among themselves to break away 
 from most of the regulations by which they had 
 been bound in their student days and to 
 formulate a new art creed of their own. From 
 this agreement sprang into existence an associa- 
 
HIS LIFE 5 
 
 tion, that, despite the small number of its mem- 
 bers, and the shortness of its life, has left upon 
 the history of the British School a mark clear 
 and ineffaceable. 
 
 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as this 
 association was called by way of declaring the 
 intentions and ambitions of the men who be- 
 longed to it, was formally constituted during 
 the autumn of 1848. It included, in addition 
 to the three originators, two other painters, 
 James Collinson and F. G. Stephens ; a sculptor, 
 Thomas Woolner; and a writer, William Michael 
 Rossetti, who acted as secretary of the Brother- 
 hood. Ford Madox Brown never became a 
 member, although he entirely sympathised with 
 the artistic aims of the group, for he had, it is 
 said, doubts concerning the utility of such a 
 banding together, and was more inclined to 
 favour independent action; but several other 
 young painters, who were never formally of the 
 company, gave it practical support, and openly 
 adopted its methods. Indeed, the list of these 
 outside sympathisers soon became a long one ; 
 it included such able workers as William Bell 
 
6 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 Scott, Arthur Hughes, Thomas Seddon, W. L. 
 Windus, and W. H. Deverell, who were directly 
 inspired by the beliefs of the Brotherhood, and 
 if, as would be quite legitimate, it were extended 
 to take in all the others whose first essays in art 
 were controlled by Pre-Raphaelite principles, an 
 astonishing number of artists who have reached 
 high rank in their profession could be added 
 to it. 
 
 At first the inner significance of the Pre- 
 Raphaelite movement was lost upon the general 
 public. When, in 1849, Millais exhibited at the 
 Academy his Lorenzo and Isabella^ by which his 
 adoption of the new creed was plainly enough 
 asserted, the picture was not unkindly received. 
 It was ridiculed, perhaps, by the people who 
 realised that it showed an artistic intention 
 somewhat unlike that which was then generally 
 prevalent; but its novelty of manner was put 
 down to the youth and inexperience of the 
 artist, and was regarded as a minor defect that a 
 few more years of practice would remedy. 
 
 But in January, 1850, the Brotherhood took 
 a step that very effectually removed any doubts 
 that were felt by the public about the meaning 
 of such canvases. They began to issue a monthly 
 magazine, called "The Germ," in which they 
 
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 H 
 
HIS LIFE 7 
 
 and their friends stated with sufficient frankness 
 what Pre-Raphaelitism really meant, and what 
 were the opinions that they professed. As a 
 commercial speculation the magazine must be 
 reckoned a failure, for after the fourth number 
 it ceased to be issued, and at no time had it any 
 general circulation. It served its purpose, how- 
 ever, of making quite intelligible the creed of its 
 promoters ; and it gave to the world certain 
 etchings of Holman Hunt, Collinson, Madox 
 Brown, and Deverell, and much literary matter 
 by Coventry Patmore, Woolner, W. B. Scott, 
 F. G. Stephens, the two Rossettis and their sister 
 Christina, and some other writers. An etching 
 was prepared by Millais for the fifth number, an 
 illustration of a story that Dante Rossetti was to 
 write ; but this fifth number did not appear. 
 
 Though "The Germ" died so quickly for 
 want of support, it had fully accomplished what 
 was required of it in the way of propagandism. 
 When the next batch of Pre-Raphaelite efforts 
 was exhibited in the spring of 1850 there was no 
 trace of hesitation or toleration in the comments 
 of the older artists and the press. A perfect 
 storm of abuse broke out. Against Ferdinand 
 lured by Ariel and Christ in the House of His 
 Parents^ which were the chief pictures sent by 
 
8 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 Millais to the Academy, the bitterest attack was 
 directed. Everything that could be said or done 
 to minimise their influence, and to discredit the 
 motives by which they were inspired, was lavished 
 upon them without restraint, in a kind of frenzy 
 of anguished excitement. 
 
 All this, however, was mild in comparison 
 with the agitation in the following year, when it 
 was seen that the Pre-Raphaelites, instead of 
 bowing to the storm and recanting their opinions, 
 were prepared to go to even greater lengths in 
 the avowal of their convictions. The opposi- 
 tion had done its best to howl them down, and 
 to frighten them by ferocious threats ; but all 
 this expenditure of misapplied energy had had 
 no result. Millais exhibited The Woodman's 
 Daughter, The Return of the Dove to the Ark, and 
 Mariana in the Moated Grange, and Holman 
 Hunt Valentine and Sylvia; while the other 
 members of the group gave equally definite 
 proofs of their intention to persevere in the 
 course they had adopted. 
 
 Alarm at this defiance, and perhaps an un- 
 easy consciousness of the real strength of a 
 movement that gave so little sign of yielding to 
 pressure, drove the supporters of the existing 
 condition of affairs to almost incredible lengths. 
 
HIS LIFE 9 
 
 They demanded that these canvases should be 
 removed from the exhibition of the Academy, 
 summarily expelled as outrages on good taste ; 
 they urged the students in the art schools to 
 shun the Brotherhood and everyone connected 
 with it ; they descended to the lowest depths of 
 misrepresentation, and drew the line at nothing 
 in the way of exaggeration. Calm and critical 
 judgment ceased, for the moment, to exist, and a 
 hysterical absence of balance threw into con- 
 fusion even the best ordered and judicious 
 minds. 
 
 This outburst had one immediate effect, an 
 unpleasant one for the young artists, it checked 
 for a while the sale of their pictures. Christ in 
 the House of His Parents had been painted on 
 commission for a well-known dealer, and it re- 
 mained for many years on his hands ; but Fer- 
 dinand lured by Ariel, which had also been 
 commissioned, was refused by the intending 
 purchaser. It was afterwards sold to Mr. Richard 
 Ellison, a collector of rare discrimination, who 
 was introduced to Millais by a mutual friend. 
 Other canvases belonging to the same period 
 either returned from the exhibitions to the artist's 
 studio, or were parted with at low prices and on 
 terms of payment none too favourable. 
 
io SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 But after a little while things began to mend. 
 The attack exhausted itself by its very excess of 
 virulence ; and here and there strong men came 
 forward to champion the cause of the Pre- 
 Raphaelites. Mr. Ruskin, especially, appeared 
 in the arena as an enthusiastic advocate of an 
 undertaking that was in every way calculated to 
 appeal to his vivid sympathies. He declared 
 with acute and prophetic insight that the pil- 
 loried artists were laying "the foundations of a 
 school of art nobler than the world has seen for 
 three hundred years." His explanations of their 
 methods were just what were wanted to set people 
 thinking. Some years, it is true, elapsed before 
 his enthusiasm, and the dogged perseverance of 
 the young men, finally converted the great ma- 
 jority of art lovers ; but the conversion did come, 
 and it was complete. 
 
 Meanwhile Millais was manfully playing his 
 part in the struggle, giving no sign that he 
 minded being, as he put it in after years, " so 
 dreadfully bullied." Nothing could shake his 
 resolve to work out his artistic destiny in the 
 way he thought best. Happily he was not entirely 
 without encouragement from the chiefs of his own 
 profession, for just at the time when the outside 
 world was decrying him most strenuously, the 
 
HIS LIFE ii 
 
 Academy elected him an Associate. This elec- 
 tion, was, however, quashed, because he was 
 discovered to be under the age at which admis- 
 sion was possible, and it was not till 1853 tnat 
 he was again chosen. By this time he had 
 added to the list of his paintings his exquisite 
 Ophelia^ The Huguenot, The Proscribed Royalist 
 and The Order of Release, all works of the highest 
 value, and regarded to-day as evidences of a 
 quite extraordinary ability. 
 
 For about ten years he remained faithful to 
 the Pre-Raphaelite creed, and made no serious 
 attempt to modify his methods. During this 
 period appeared his Portrait of Mr. Ruskin, 
 The Rescue, Autumn Leaves, The Blind Girl, 
 Sir Isumbras at the Ford, The Vale of Rest, and 
 Apple Blossoms, of which the last two are to be 
 reckoned as to some extent transitional, leading 
 the way to the later changes in both his theory 
 and practice. What was to be the nature of 
 these changes was foreshadowed by The Eve of 
 St. Agnes, shown at the Academy in 1863, the 
 year before his advancement to the rank of 
 Royal Academician. This was the beginning of 
 a period during which he wavered between re- 
 collections of his earlier style and an obvious 
 desire to find new ways of expressing himself. 
 
12 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 These variations in his production implied that 
 he was just then uncertain as to the course 
 which it would be best for him to follow. He 
 recognised that there were many details of his 
 youthful creed which had served their purpose 
 and ought to be set aside. He was conscious 
 of the possibilities that his wonderful command 
 over his materials opened up to him, and he 
 knew that his years of devoted study had given 
 him an equipment of knowledge that would 
 serve him in any emergency ; what he was seek- 
 ing was the exact form in which to cast his 
 efforts so as to allow full scope to his abilities 
 and to make indisputable that wide popularity 
 which was coming to him at last. 
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 There was no hesitation about the avowal of 
 his new views when finally he did make up his 
 mind. With a suddenness that was absolutely 
 startling, he abandoned the close and careful 
 realism that marked in such canvases as Asleep, 
 Awake, and The Minuet, the still-continuing in- 
 fluence of his Pre-Raphaelite conviction, and 
 chose instead the riotous freedom of touch, and 
 the happy readiness of suggestion that make his 
 
[Burlington House. 
 A SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ. 
 
HIS LIFE 13 
 
 Souvenir of Velasquez, Rosalind and Celia, and 
 Stella so impressive. The dramatic point of 
 this change is that a year sufficed to bring it 
 into active operation. In 1867 he was still 
 anxious to work out bit by bit and part by part 
 every fact that his subject might present, and, in 
 his zeal for naturalism, to leave no chance of 
 mistake about the exact meaning of his treat- 
 ment ; in 1868 he had thrown himself heart and 
 soul into the task of persuading his admirers to 
 accept hints in the place of plain statements, 
 and to understand subtle compromises with 
 nature, instead of direct transcriptions of her 
 assertions. 
 
 Thenceforward his progress was an almost 
 unbroken series of successes, gained by superb 
 mastery of craftsmanship, and by the splendid 
 confidence in himself that put his intentions 
 always beyond the possibility of doubt. With 
 few exceptions his pictures, to the end of his 
 life, were worthy to rank with the best that the 
 British school can show, great in accomplish- 
 ment, admirable in style, and attractive always 
 by their frankness of manner and purity of 
 motive. In some ways he enlarged his borders, 
 for in 1871 he made, with Chill October, his 
 first digression into landscape without figures, 
 
14 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 and began that array of important studies of the 
 open air which reveal most instructively his 
 limitless patience and searching power of obser- 
 vation. 
 
 As a portrait painter also he developed super- 
 lative gifts, adding year by year to a collection 
 of masterpieces unequalled by any of his con- 
 temporaries. He was fortunate in his sitters, 
 and the list of his productions in this branch of 
 art includes a large proportion of the most 
 beautiful women and distinguished men who 
 have graced the latter half of the century. He 
 immortalised impartially leaders of fashion, 
 pretty children, noted politicians, and people 
 eminent in many professions ; and in his ren- 
 dering of these various types he missed nothing 
 of the individuality and distinctive character 
 with which each one was endowed. Here espe- 
 cially his Pre-Raphaelite training stood him in 
 good stead ; for the habit of close analysis and 
 careful investigation had been so impressed upon 
 him by the experiences of his youth, that his 
 instinctive judgment was now perfectly reliable, 
 and his ability to decide promptly and with 
 certainty about the aspects of his subject which 
 were fittest for pictorial record had become ab- 
 solutely complete. 
 
HIS LIFE 15 
 
 In this succession of portraits some stand out 
 commandingly as notable performances even 
 for an artist who was always distinguished for 
 example, Mrs. Bischoffsheim (1873), Miss Eveleen 
 Tennant (1874), Mrs. Jopling (1879), Mrs. 
 Perugini (1880), Sir Henry Irving (1884), The 
 Right Hon. W. E, Gladstone (i885),/. C. Hook, 
 R.A. (1882), and The Marquis of Salisbury 
 (1883) marking great moments in his career; 
 just as from time to time figure compositions of 
 rare importance, like The North- West Passage 
 (1874), Effie Deans (1877), The Princes in the 
 Tower (1878), and Speak ! Speak I (1895), punc- 
 tuated the progress of his intellectual and imagin- 
 ative evolution. He was always, to the last day 
 of his life, ambitious and eager to grapple with 
 problems of technical expression. Courage to 
 face the supreme difficulties of his profession 
 never failed him. He had no idea of avoiding 
 responsibilities, or of finding in an easy conven- 
 tion a way to evade his duty to art ; and he tried 
 consistently to bring his production up to the 
 high level that would satisfy his ideals. When 
 he missed his aim and there is no such thing 
 as unvarying success for any artist it was not 
 for want of thought or sincere effort, but rather 
 from over-anxiety. He once said of himself, " I 
 
16 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 may honestly say that I never consciously put 
 an idle touch upon canvas, and that I have 
 always been earnest and hard-working ; yet the 
 worst pictures I ever painted in my life are those 
 into which I threw most trouble and labour " ; 
 and in these few words he summed up his whole 
 history. 
 
 LAST YEARS 
 
 It was characteristic of him that the honours 
 which were heaped upon him in his later years 
 should have diminished neither the strength of 
 his work nor the charm of his personality. 
 Affectation or self-consciousness were the last 
 things that were possible to such a nature with 
 its almost boyish energy and magnificent vitality. 
 Yet he had every reason to be proud of success 
 that had come to him, not by fortunate chance, 
 but as a result of his own tenacity. He was 
 made an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and 
 received the Medaille d'Honneur at the Paris 
 International Exhibition, in 1878; the degree 
 of D.C.L. was conferred upon him at Oxford in 
 
 1880, and at Durham in 1893; he was elected 
 a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in 
 
 1 88 1, a Foreign Associate of the Academic des 
 Beaux Arts in 1882, and President of the Royal 
 
HIS LIFE 17 
 
 Academy in 1896 ; he was created a Baronet in 
 1885, and an Officer of the Order of Leopold in 
 1895 ; and was, besides, an Officer of the Order 
 of St. Maurice, and the Prussian Order " Pour 
 la Merite," and a member of the Academies of 
 Vienna, Belgium, Antwerp, and of St. Luke, 
 Rome, and San Fernando, Madrid. He was one 
 of the few Englishmen invited to contribute his 
 portrait to the great collection of pictures of 
 artists painted by themselves in the Uffizi Gallery 
 at Florence. Such a record proves most cogently 
 the manner in which the public estimate of his 
 capacity changed as years went on ; it is instruc- 
 tive to compare its unanimity of recognition 
 with the story of the time when art teachers were 
 urging their pupils to greet the name of Millais 
 with hisses, and were holding up his work, and 
 that of his associates, to the bitterest execration. 
 The post of President of the Royal Academy 
 he held for only six months, for he succeeded 
 Lord Leighton on February 2oth, 1896, and 
 died on 1 3th of August in the same year. His 
 election, however, rounded off appropriately that 
 long association with the Academy to which he 
 referred in his speech at the 1895 banquet, at 
 which he presided in the absence of Lord 
 Leighton. " I must tell you briefly my connec- 
 
 r 
 
1 8 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 tion with this Academy. I entered the Antique 
 School as a probationer, when I was eleven years 
 of age; then became a student in the Life School; 
 and I have risen from stage to stage until I 
 reached the position I now hold of Royal 
 Academician : so that, man and boy, I have been 
 intimately connected with this Academy for 
 more than half a century. I have received here 
 a free education as an artist an advantage any 
 lad may enjoy who can pass a qualifying examina- 
 tion and I owe the Academy a debt of gratitude 
 I never can repay. I can, however, make this 
 return I can give it my love. I love everything 
 belonging to it ; the casts I have drawn from as 
 a boy, the books I have consulted in our Library, 
 the very benches I have sat on." No other 
 teaching institution had, indeed, had any part 
 in his education ; no other art society had given 
 him assistance at a moment when the world was 
 against him; and in no other direction had such 
 practical belief in the greatness of his future been 
 manifested. Truly, he owed a debt of gratitude 
 to the Academy, and he repaid it by being ever 
 one of its most active supporters, and by doing 
 infinite credit to its best traditions. 
 
 There was something peculiarly pathetic in 
 the fact that his life should have ended just when 
 
HIS LIFE 19 
 
 he had reached the position that must have 
 seemed to him, after his long and intimate con- 
 nection with the Academy, the most honourable 
 to which he could aspire. To be the head of 
 the institution that he loved so well, and to be 
 hailed as chief in the place that had seen every 
 stage of his development, from childhood to ripe 
 maturity, could not fail to be anything but ex- 
 quisitely gratifying to a man of his nature. But 
 almost at the moment of his election it appeared 
 that there was little time left him in which to 
 enjoy the honour that had crowned his many 
 years of devotion to the great principles of art. 
 The fatal disease that had gripped him a little 
 while before was not to be shaken off, and was 
 sapping rapidly and effectually even his superb 
 vitality. He worked on, however, almost to the 
 end, hopeful even in the midst of suffering, active 
 in carrying out the duties of his office, and busy 
 as ever with the canvases that crowded his 
 studio. He was fully represented in the Academy 
 Exhibition of 1896, by a group of portraits, and 
 by a picture, A Forerunner, which showed no 
 sign of failing strength or of any relaxation in 
 his grasp of the essentials of his craft. 
 
 Then, with painful suddenness, came the 
 verdict of his doctors, that his case was hopeless. 
 
20 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 The throat trouble, that had been growing month 
 by month more acute and distressing, was pro- 
 nounced to be cancer and incurable. In June 
 the disease had made such strides that the end 
 seemed to be imminent, but an operation gave 
 him some relief, and his life was prolonged till 
 the middle of August, when at last death released 
 him from his agony. He passed away at the 
 house in Palace Gate, Kensington, which had 
 been the scene of the many triumphs of his later 
 years, dying as he had lived, full of courage and 
 patience, fearing nothing, and meeting his fate 
 with cheerful resignation. On August 2oth, he 
 was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, beside his old 
 friend Lord Leighton, whom only a few months 
 before he had helped to lay to rest. 
 
 His death not only left a gap in the ranks of 
 art, but it also took away, while he was yet in 
 the full enjoyment of his powers, a man whose 
 sterling qualities had attracted a host of friends. 
 His frankness and honesty, his geniality and 
 kindliness, and, above all, his manly wholesome- 
 ness, without taint of modern decadence or 
 morbidity, endeared him to everyone with whom 
 he came in contact. He was typically English, 
 in the best sense, with all the physical and 
 mental attributes that have enabled our race to 
 
HIS LIFE 21 
 
 dominate the world, a lover of the country, a 
 good shot, a keen fisherman, and a fearless 
 horseman. The very look of him, with his 
 stalwart, well set-up figure, and handsome, self- 
 reliant face, conveyed the impression of perfect 
 health of mind and body, and declared the in- 
 exhaustible vigour of his nature. 
 
HIS ART 
 
 WITH all his definiteness of opinion and 
 sincere belief in the accuracy of his own 
 judgment, Millais was too keenly alive to the 
 varieties of nature, too earnest in his observation 
 of the life about him, to fall into the mechanical 
 habit of repeating himself. He was robust, 
 modern and practical, a man whose instinct was 
 active rather than contemplative ; and he might 
 even be said to be wanting in imagination, if by 
 imagination is understood the capacity to evolve 
 things curious and unusual out of the inner 
 consciousness. 
 
 But if he lacked imagination in this sense, he 
 more than made up for the deficiency by the 
 exquisite acuteness of his insight into natural 
 facts, and by the depth of his judgment about 
 the essentials of art. He made no mistakes 
 through ignorance or want of proper preparation; 
 and he never failed because he grudged the pre- 
 liminary thought needed to carry to success a 
 great undertaking. Indeed, the one thing that 
 
HIS ART 23 
 
 he always preached was application, constant 
 industry devoted to the task of finding out how 
 work should be done. Carelessness he con- 
 demned ; but he had no love for that type of 
 performance which shows the trouble that the 
 producer has taken over it. Ke contended, 
 justly, that it was the duty of the artist to so 
 master the executive details of his profession 
 that his work should impress the spectator by 
 its ready certainty rather than its conscientious 
 toil. 
 
 The need to strive for the quality of freshness 
 in technical expression was, however, very far 
 from being the only thing he insisted upon. He 
 had, as well, a strong belief in the importance of 
 a definitely independent attitude with regard to 
 choice of pictorial motive, and selection of suit- 
 able material. But beyond this he advocated 
 special precautions against any narrowing of the 
 artist's practice by too close adherence to one 
 kind of picture. He once put this conviction 
 into words of considerable significance. " In- 
 dividuality is not all that should be looked to ; 
 a varied manner must be cultivated as well. I 
 believe that however admirably he may paint in 
 a certain method, or however perfectly he may 
 render a certain class of subject, the artist should 
 
24 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 not be content to adhere to a speciality of manner 
 or method. A fine style is good, but it is not 
 everything it is not absolutely necessary." 
 
 Certainly Sir John carried out these principles 
 in his own production. He had many sides to 
 his character as an artist, and used his powers 
 of observation with splendid freedom. His 
 popularity was gained not by the reiteration 
 of any one set of ideas, but by showing himself 
 equally capable in many forms of painting. In 
 his figure pictures he was by turns dramatic, 
 romantic, sternly realistic, and at times senti- 
 mental in a robust way ; in his portraits he was 
 incisive, direct, and accurate ; in his landscapes 
 precise, exact, and searchingly correct in his 
 rendering of what was before him ; and in his 
 water-colours and drawings in black and white 
 delightfully facile and ingenious. He had no 
 speciality, and no set conviction that there was 
 one particular thing he could do better than any- 
 thing else ; so that he never restrained his love 
 of variety or bound himself by limitations based 
 simply upon expediency. 
 
 In any classification of his works, the first 
 place must necessarily be given to his figure 
 paintings and portraits. Indeed, they make up 
 the bulk of his achievement, and represent the 
 
HIS ART 25 
 
 fullest growth of his capacity. The history of 
 his life is principally written in them. The 
 charm of his personality distinguishes them all 
 a charm as evident in the simpler and more 
 limited subjects as in those which made great 
 demands upon his powers of invention and con- 
 trivance. There was never any suggestion that 
 he did not honestly feel the motive with which 
 he was dealing, or that he was not perfectly 
 convinced that what he had chosen was worthy 
 of record. If he failed, it was because he had 
 misapprehended the suitability of his material, 
 not because he had been trying to do something 
 outside the range of his belief. 
 
 Curiously, perhaps, his honesty and direct- 
 ness were at the same time the source of what 
 was best in his pictures, and the cause of their 
 chief weaknesses. Had he not been so frank 
 and wholesome-minded he could never have 
 arrived at that exquisite appreciation of the 
 daintiness of childhood to which he gave ex- 
 pression in a great many of his most successful 
 canvases, and could never have gained, as he 
 did, the hearts of all classes of art lovers. Only 
 a worshipper of children, with the most absolute 
 sympathy with their ways and habits, could have 
 painted pictures as persuasive as Cherry Ripe, 
 
26 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 A Waif, Caller Herring The Princess Elizabeth, 
 and that long series of pretty studies of which 
 Perfect Bliss, Dropped from the Nest, Forbidden 
 Fruit, and Little Mrs. Gamp may be quoted as 
 types. Only a man with the happiest sense of 
 delicate shades of character could have com- 
 manded the extraordinary popularity that came 
 to him as a result of his production of pictures 
 such as these. 
 
 Yet it was to these very qualities that was due 
 his occasional want of success in dealing with 
 stronger themes. His dramatic pictures de- 
 scended at times into an artlessness that was 
 only redeemed from feebleness by its obvious 
 sincerity. They failed because he concerned 
 himself so much with matters of fact that he 
 missed the greater possibilities of the subjects 
 he had selected, and because in his desire to be 
 real and convincing he forgot that there was a 
 need to appeal to the imagination of people who 
 would not be satisfied with plain statements. 
 
 On the other hand it is possible to select from 
 among his subject pictures several that prove 
 him to have had brilliant moments when he 
 could reach the greater heights of pictorial in- 
 vention. There are quite half a dozen of his 
 canvases which by their wonderful vitality, their 
 
HIS ART 27 
 
 deep significance, and force of expression make 
 good a claim to the possession of the finest kind 
 of mastery. The Vale of Rest, The North- West 
 Passage, The Order of Release, The Ruling Pas- 
 sion, The Boyhood of Raleigh, and perhaps Effie 
 Deans show that he could grasp with all possible 
 firmness and state with unflinching decision, 
 motives that called for great mental exertion. 
 Their qualities are those that come from a minute 
 insight not only into details of character, but 
 also into the principles which govern the dra- 
 matic side of pictorial art. No false note spoils 
 the harmony of these compositions, no touch of 
 uncertainty or divided opinion ; they are con- 
 fident and assured, and their meaning is not to 
 be questioned. They express the thoughts of a 
 man who, with all his straightforwardness and 
 simplicity, could now and then look beneath 
 the surface and work out problems far more 
 profound than it was his every-day habit to 
 investigate. 
 
 His romance, especially, had this merit of 
 being well thought out. It was never compli- 
 cated by excess of details, and was strict in its 
 adherence to the main facts of the story, without 
 irrelevant matter introduced to complete pictur- 
 esquely an imperfect conception. The Knight 
 
28 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 Errant is a very good example of his method of 
 dealing with an incident evolved from his own 
 fancy; and Victory \ O Lord! is equally charac- 
 teristic as an instance of the power with which 
 he could seize upon the salient points of a 
 subject suggested to him by written history. 
 Many of his finer paintings were illustrative 
 records of the impressions made upon him by 
 things he had read, and expressions of the 
 instinct that brought him throughout his life 
 such success as a draughtsman in black and 
 white ; but they were only occasionally direct 
 illustrations of particular passages from books. 
 More often what he gave was his view of what 
 might have happened, rather than a plain re- 
 production in paint of what was already fixed in 
 words. 
 
 He preferred to base himself more upon the 
 spirit than the letter of a story, to find a new 
 reading for himself, and to treat it with a con- 
 siderable degree of independence. In The 
 Princes in the Tower he followed none of the 
 accepted versions, and in Effie Deans he made 
 a subject out of the slightest possible suggestion 
 in the text of the romance; yet both pictures 
 show that peculiar air of conviction which results 
 from a perfect understanding of what is essential 
 
HIS ART 29 
 
 for the proper application of dramatic material. 
 In these, as in almost all his renderings of 
 incident, appears his habit of attacking not the 
 climax of the story, but rather one of its earlier 
 stages, an intermediate moment when the action 
 is still in progress and the final result is suggested 
 rather than clearly foreshadowed. This habit 
 was always strong upon him. It gave their 
 particular interest to such early works as The 
 Huguenot, The Black Brunswicker, The Pro- 
 scribed Royalist^ and The Escape of a Heretic , 
 just as much as it did to later pictures like The 
 Girlhood of St. Theresa, or Speak ! Speak I ; 
 and by introducing a touch of speculation into 
 the record of his thoughts he enhanced the 
 fascination which was never wanting in his 
 sturdy inventions. 
 
 Indeed, there was in every branch of his figure- 
 painting some sufficient reason for his popularity, 
 some distinct attractiveness of mental quality to 
 add convincingly to the impression created by 
 his superlative command over technicalities. He 
 could be tender, dainty, and refined in his studies 
 of children; serious and solemn in his symbolical 
 compositions ; pathetic, vigorous, and passionate 
 by turns in his subject-pictures ; and through all 
 ran a vein of sentiment that was always whole- 
 
30 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 some, clean, and intelligible. He never affected 
 to be influenced by feelings that were not 
 honestly natural to him, nor did he pretend to 
 represent anything that he did not believe in 
 sincerely and without question. What he painted 
 was invariably what he felt at the moment ; and, 
 whether it was a masterpiece or a comparative 
 failure it expressed simply the appeal that the 
 subject had made to him ; and his response to 
 this appeal was always unconventional and 
 definite. 
 
 He trusted in the same way to a personal 
 impression of his sitter when he set himself to 
 paint a portrait. What he wanted was to show 
 that he understood the individuality of the man 
 or woman before him, and that his understand- 
 ing had helped him to make clear to others the 
 special idiosyncrasies that separated that man or 
 woman from the ordinary crowd. Portraiture to 
 him was a matter of observation, of receptiveness 
 to suggestion, and acceptance of what was visible, 
 rather than an artistic process which enabled him 
 to give free scope to his inventive instincts. 
 
 Perhaps he was less analytical and discriminat- 
 ing in his pictures of women. They seemed to 
 appeal to him less than men did as subjects for 
 psychological study. What he preferred to dwell 
 
HIS ART 31 
 
 upon were the physical charms of femininity, 
 beauty of face and form, elegance of carriage, 
 and that rounded fulness of development that 
 argues perfect healthiness of body and mind. 
 The stateliness of the card-players in Hearts are 
 Trumps^ the air of high breeding and conscious 
 power which distinguishes the portrait of the 
 Duchess of Westminster, and the more matronly 
 splendour of Mrs. Bischoffsheim, mark the chief 
 variations in his manner of painting womankind; 
 occasionally only did he diverge into more detailed 
 character, as in Miss Eveleen Tennant^ Mrs. 
 Jopling, and Mrs. Perugini; but as a rule he was 
 content to treat the freshness and brilliant vitality 
 of his feminine sitters, and to leave untouched 
 their possibilities of passion or strong emotion. 
 His men were full of vigorous aspirations, re- 
 strained for the moment, yet near the surface and 
 ready at any time to break into activity ; but his 
 women were serene and unmoved, prepared, 
 perhaps, for conquest, but wrapped in a reserve 
 that would not allow them to make the first 
 advances. 
 
 That his preference for repose in representa- 
 tion did not lead the artist into a dry convention, 
 or into any disregard of the essential points of 
 difference between people, is very evident if a 
 
32 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 comparison is made of his chief portraits. 
 Beneath their reserve appears a wonderful variety 
 of manner, and a superb power of interpretation. 
 They are studied, exact, and intensely real No 
 perfunctory labour is seen in them, and their 
 value is diminished by no slurring over of the 
 little things which help to define the more 
 intimate characteristics of the modern man. 
 
 The unquestionable popularity that Millais 
 gained by his excursions into landscape was 
 equally due to the fact that he was a student of 
 nature, not an imaginative interpreter of what 
 she presented. He dealt with facts and left 
 fancies almost entirely alone. In the series of 
 canvases that began with Chill October, and 
 ended with Halcyon Weather, there was infinite 
 industry, marvellous accuracy, perfect veracity 
 of record, but little effort to be anything but 
 absolutely exact in his statement of what he 
 saw. His amazing patience and his surprising 
 quickness of vision, enabled him to grasp with 
 easy confidence the plain truths of nature, and 
 his command of brushwork ensured a rare 
 perfection in his pictorial expression of the 
 matter that he had selected for representation. 
 Nothing was implied or left in sketchy incom- 
 pleteness, because his patience had failed him 
 
HIS ART 33 
 
 before he had realised the complicated fulness 
 of his subject. He spared himself no toil to 
 arrive at what seemed to him to be the perfec- 
 tion of nature, and he was as minutely attentive, 
 as surely certain of himself, as he ever was in 
 his figure work. 
 
 As a necessary consequence, however, of this 
 manner of working, he never could be ranked 
 among the inspired painters of the open air, 
 nor could he ever be said to have dealt ex- 
 haustively with the problems presented by nat- 
 ural phenomena. He remained untouched by 
 the subtleties of atmospheric effect, by the 
 varieties of momentary illumination, or by the 
 fleeting glories of aerial colour, which provide the 
 student of nature's devices with the chief incen- 
 tive to artistic effort. He was always too much 
 Concerned with the things at his feet, with 
 matter that he could dissect and investigate, to 
 give much thought to the broad and comprehen- 
 sive scheme of which these things formed part. 
 Whatever he arrived at in the way of a record of 
 a natural effect was reached not so much by 
 thorough understanding of the effect as a whole, 
 as by an amazingly acute interpretation of the 
 influence exercised by it upon the details upon 
 which his eyes were fixed. 
 
 D 
 
34 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 An excellent instance of this is afforded in 
 The Blind Girl, where he has given little enough 
 attention to the grandeur of the passing storm- 
 clouds, and has concentrated the whole of his 
 energies upon the rendering, with supreme 
 fidelity, of dripping weeds and a drenched hill- 
 side lighted by the rays of the setting sun. As 
 a record of microscopic insight, the picture is 
 superlatively successful; it could hardly be 
 more closely reasoned out ; but, as a representa- 
 tion of Nature in one of her most impressive 
 moods, it is ineffectual and unconvincing. So, 
 too, his most popular landscape, Chill October , 
 falls short of greatness, because it is too plainly 
 studied bit by bit, and part by part, and built 
 up precisely by the careful putting in place of 
 material collected for the pictorial purpose. It 
 holds together, not because it has one great 
 dominating intention, but because its construc- 
 tion is so ingenious, and its mechanism so 
 workmanlike, that no single detail can be 
 criticised as out of relation to the rest. It can 
 hardly be called learned in design, nor can it be 
 said to have any conspicuous dignity of style ; 
 yet the knowledge of form, the intimate observa- 
 tion of the growth of riverside vegetation, and 
 the appreciation of autumnal colouring, which 
 
HIS ART 35 
 
 were turned to account by the artist in his 
 treatment of the subject, make the canvas 
 prominent among the greatest nature studies of 
 modern times. 
 
 No consideration of his influence and no 
 review of his performance would be complete 
 without an appreciative reference to his services 
 to black and white. As a painter he has a 
 secure place among the chief modern masters 
 of the world ; but what he did for pictorial art 
 was paralleled, if not surpassed, by his assertion 
 of the dignity and importance of illustration as 
 a form of occupation for even the greatest of art 
 workers. 
 
 It has been well said that if Millais had never 
 devoted himself to the painting of oil pictures, but 
 had given his life entirely to the work of book 
 illustration, his position would still have been in- 
 disputable, and his magnificent ability would have 
 been amply demonstrated. There is, indeed; a 
 great deal of truth in this contention. Although 
 the world would have been the poorer for the 
 loss of his masterly essays in brushwork, and of 
 his wonderful exercises in the arrangement of 
 strong colour, it would have possessed extremely 
 significant evidence of the reality of his artistic 
 judgment, and of the adaptability of his inven- 
 
36 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 tive powers. In his black and white work he 
 showed frequently a side of his capacity that 
 appeared in his painting only on great occasions, 
 a sense of dramatic exigencies, a feeling for 
 illustrative meanings, far beyond what was sug- 
 gested by the general run of his pictures. As 
 an interpreter of the fancies of other men he 
 was exceptionally intelligent, with a memorable 
 grasp of the salient points of the story and a 
 remarkable facility in summarising essentials. 
 He was afraid of nothing in the way of a 
 subject, and spared no labour to make his 
 drawings completely expressive. 
 
 His love of black and white was indeed a 
 genuine one. Illustration was not to him, as it 
 so often is with other men, a mere expedient, 
 resorted to because an un appreciative public 
 refused to recognise the merit and importance 
 of his paintings, and abandoned gladly as soon 
 as he found he could make a sufficient income 
 without it. On the contrary, he welcomed the 
 opportunities with which this branch of art 
 practice provided him, and regarded them as of 
 the highest value. For more than twenty years 
 he was a prolific illustrator, constantly busy with 
 drawings that were reproduced in all kinds of 
 books and magazines ; and even in his later life 
 
HIS ART 37 
 
 occasional examples appeared to prove that his 
 hand had not lost its cunning and that his 
 interest in this type of work was undiminished. 
 
 How deeply he felt about this particular sub- 
 ject is, perhaps, best proved by his constant 
 advocacy, within and without the Academy, of 
 the claims of illustrative draughtsmen to official 
 recognition. Before the Royal Commission on 
 the Academy he strenuously urged that workers 
 in black and white should be declared eligible 
 for election to membership of that institution as 
 draughtsmen purely, instead of being required 
 to disguise themselves as picture painters before 
 they could hope for admission ; and his plead- 
 ing then expressed a conviction which remained 
 strong in him till his death. He spoke with 
 real authority on a matter that, both by inclina- 
 tion and association, he was fully qualified to 
 discuss. His experience of illustrative drawing, 
 and his acquaintance with the history of its de- 
 velopment, were both peculiarly intimate ; and 
 he knew exactly what were the possibilities of 
 influence possessed by the craft. 
 
 About his technical methods there is com- 
 paratively little to be said. He was not a worker 
 who concerned himself very deeply over devices 
 of execution, or cared to codify his system of 
 
38 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 painting in accordance with scientific principles. 
 He drew well, and handled his materials with 
 the sureness and confidence that came from 
 complete knowledge of what he wanted to do. 
 His chief desire, as has been already stated, was 
 to retain in pictures that had really cost him 
 deep thought and prolonged labour an aspect of 
 spontaneity and freshness ; to be direct in state- 
 ment and simple in expression. He had a well- 
 founded belief that the finest art was that in 
 which the meaning of the artist was to be real- 
 ised with the least amount of seeking and with 
 as little inquiry as possible about his intentions. 
 Consequently, he strove all his life to master the 
 intricacies of his craft, so that no hesitation on 
 his part might make his meaning vague or in- 
 definite. 
 
 Speed he always had. Even in the apparently 
 laborious period of his Pre-Raphaelite perform- 
 ance he could, and did, paint with amazing 
 facility the head of Ferdinand in Ferdinand 
 lured by Ariel, was, for instance, completed in 
 five hours and as years went on his certainty 
 became even more indisputable. Cherry Ripe 
 was painted in a week, The Last Rose of Summer 
 in not more than four days, and for many of his 
 portraits half a dozen sittings sufficed to give 
 
HIS ART 39 
 
 him all that was necessary for the achievement 
 of a masterpiece. His quickness of apprehen- 
 sion and accuracy of vision helped him to a 
 prompt decision as to choice of material ; and 
 when his direction was once fixed, his inex- 
 haustible energy carried him easily through the 
 work of production. Nature had well equipped 
 him for his profession, and wisely he followed 
 the lines she had laid down. 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE works which have been reproduced as 
 illustrations to this summary of the career 
 of one of the greatest artists whom the British 
 school has known have been selected with the 
 intention of representing the more important 
 stages in his progress. It is comparatively easy 
 to divide his life into different periods, each one 
 of which was marked by some achievements of 
 more than ordinary significance. Thus the Christ 
 in the House of His Parents (1849), and Ophelia 
 (1852) belong to the time when he was a devout 
 believer in the creed of the Pre-Raphaelite 
 Brotherhood; Autumn Leaves (1856) and The 
 Vale of Rest (1858) show the first beginnings 
 of the change of conviction which led him 
 a few years later to an almost complete aband- 
 onment of his earlier principles ; A Souvenir of 
 Velasquez (1868) marks the end of the transi- 
 tion from his youthful methods to the vigorous 
 freedom of his middle life ; The North- West 
 Passage (1874) and A Yeoman of the Guard 
 40 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 41 
 
 (1876), the triumphant attainment of absolute 
 mastery over all the details of his craft, and the 
 Thomas Carlyk (1877), the commencement of 
 that period of sober confidence in his perfected 
 skill which continued till his death in 1896. 
 
 There is hardly one of these pictures which 
 does not by its superlative quality deserve a 
 place among the great things that may be said 
 to have made our art history. They show Sir 
 John Millais not only as a splendid executant 
 but also as a frank and sincere thinker on art 
 questions, who did not hesitate to modify his 
 opinions as his widening experience proved to 
 him that a better way than the one which he 
 was following at the moment might be found to 
 lead him to the highest results. It is a fortunate 
 circumstance that with one exception the whole 
 of this group of noble works can be counted as 
 public property. They have passed into galleries 
 where they are always accessible, and they are 
 within the reach of every student who wishes to 
 profit by the great lessons they are able to teach. 
 
 CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS 
 
 This is the earliest and in some respects the 
 most ambitious of the Pre-Raphaelite pictures. 
 In it all the resources of Pre-Raphaelitism are 
 
42 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 turned to good account, and the logic of the 
 creed is asserted with unquestioning faith. A 
 verse in Zechariah, "And one shall say unto 
 him, ' What are these wounds in thine hands ? ' 
 Then he shall answer, ' Those with which I was 
 wounded in the house of my friends,'* " provided 
 the motive, and the love of exact and searching 
 observation which was from the first the govern- 
 ing principle of the artist's practice, controlled 
 every detail of the execution. 
 
 As a religious painting, a representation of a 
 Holy Family, this work was by no means approved 
 by the mid-century critics. One of the writers 
 of the period, who joined in the general outcry 
 against the picture, declared, with what seems 
 now to have been quite unnecessary emphasis, 
 that it touched "the lowest depths of what is 
 mean, odious, repulsive, and repelling." It 
 certainly shows no respect for any of the tradi- 
 tions which were then popularly supposed to 
 call for the unquestioning support of every 
 artist, for the spirit by which was inspired such 
 a composition, for instance, as Sir Charles East- 
 lake's Christ lamenting over Jerusalem^ a picture 
 now in the Tate Gallery, which explains very 
 well the sort of feebleness that was in fashion in 
 the middle of the nineteenth century. 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 43 
 
 Millais did not hesitate to put on one side all 
 the namby-pamby prettiness and elegant affecta- 
 tion which governed the production of his con- 
 temporaries, and struck out for himself in a very 
 different direction. He laid the scene of his 
 story in the house of Joseph, and, to quote 
 another critic, associated the characters of the 
 sacred story "with the meanest details of a car- 
 penter's shop, with no conceivable omission of 
 misery, of dirt, and even of disease, all finished 
 with the same loathsome minuteness." The 
 child Christ stands before the carpenter's bench 
 with the Virgin kneeling beside him preparing 
 to bind up with a piece of linen a wound in his 
 hand, at which Joseph leaning forward from the 
 end of the bench is looking. St. Anne in the 
 background is picking up a pair of pincers, and 
 beside Joseph is John the Baptist coming towards 
 the central group with a bowl of water in his 
 hands. An assistant on the other side of the 
 picture watches the incident gravely. 
 
 The keynote of the whole composition is its 
 earnest symbolism. Every one of the lovingly 
 laboured details explains something of the story, 
 the tools on the wall, the dove perched on the 
 ladder, and the sheep, typifying the faithful, and 
 the wattled fence, an emblem of the Church, 
 
44 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 which are seen through the doorway; while in 
 the meadow beyond is placed a well as a symbol 
 of Truth. In its imaginative qualities, the picture 
 is not less masterly than in its technical accuracy, 
 and excites as much wonder by the depth of 
 thought it reveals as by its astonishing accom- 
 plishment. It is the most original of all the 
 artist's earlier works, marking definitely his 
 emancipation from the influences of his student 
 days, and his development in craftsmanship. 
 
 OPHELIA 
 
 The Ophelia is neither in scale nor in imagin- 
 ative invention as impressive as the Christ in 
 the House of His Parents^ but it is, without 
 doubt, one of the pictures by which he will most 
 surely be remembered. It is an admirable ex- 
 ample of his searching study of natural details, 
 close and elaborate in its realisation of every 
 part of the subject, and curiously true in its 
 rendering of the subtle tones of brilliant day- 
 light. Only an observer endowed with extra- 
 ordinary keenness of vision, and with absolutely 
 inexhaustible patience could have interpreted so 
 exactly all the complexities of such a scene. In 
 no part of the canvas is it possible to detect any 
 
ffi 
 
 PH 
 O 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 45 
 
 relaxation of his strenuous effort after complete- 
 ness ; nothing is slurred over, and nothing which 
 could add to the persuasiveness of the work is 
 omitted. 
 
 The points which are particularly to be noticed 
 are the amazing accuracy of the drawing of every 
 leaf and twig in the background, the truth with 
 which the floating draperies and the river weeds 
 lying beneath the surface of the water have been 
 rendered, and the brilliant vivacity of the colour, 
 which, strong and insistent as it is, entirely 
 avoids garishness and rankness of quality. 
 There is, too, a delightful tenderness of senti- 
 ment which suits to perfection a subject full of 
 sympathetic suggestion. Not a trace of affecta- 
 tion is to be perceived ; the sincerity and good 
 faith of the artist cannot for an instant be 
 doubted, and his understanding of the dramatic 
 meaning of the incident chosen is perfectly 
 judicious. It would not be easy to find a 
 picture which marks more truly the difference 
 between the finish that comes from learned 
 study, and the mere surface elaboration by 
 which an uninspired artist seeks to hide his in- 
 sufficiency of technical knowledge. The imi- 
 tative painter is satisfied if he can deceive the 
 eye by tricks of handling, cunningly managed, 
 
46 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 and cares little for the broad effect of his canvas 
 as a whole; but Millais, who was a man of 
 genius, could never have contented himself with 
 the cheap popularity attainable by such devices. 
 He took a far larger view of his artistic respon- 
 sibility, and even in his most prolonged and 
 assiduous labour he never forgot that the part 
 which every touch had to play in the general 
 pictorial scheme had to be considered. That 
 he should never have lost the unity of effect of 
 his Ophelia^ though he spent many weeks paint- 
 ing the landscape setting of the figure, in a quiet 
 corner on the Ewell River, near Kingston, may 
 be regarded as a convincing proof of his rare 
 fitness for dealing with some of the greater 
 problems of open air painting. 
 
 AUTUMN LEAVES 
 
 As an example of his use of poetic and tender 
 sentiment this picture is now rightly admired as 
 the most fascinating of all the works which he 
 produced during his life. It is neither a great 
 composition nor an amazing illustration of 
 minute patience in technical performance; but 
 it has a spontaneous charm of manner that puts 
 it among the few modern masterpieces. When 
 it was first exhibited it was not properly under- 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 47 
 
 stood by the general public, but expert observers 
 even then appreciated its delicate symbolism, 
 and saw in it qualities of the noblest kind. Mr. 
 Ruskin praised it with generous enthusiasm, 
 and not only ranked it as one of the monu- 
 mental canvases of the world, but declared that 
 not even to Titian could be assigned a place 
 higher than that which Millais had reached by 
 this triumphant achievement. 
 
 Judged as a piece of painting it is surprisingly 
 free from all those little artifices which a less 
 thoughtful artist would have used to increase 
 the strength of his appeal to the attention of the 
 public. It is studiously quiet in manner and 
 formal in composition, an arrangement of severe 
 lines and simple masses, which might easily have 
 been made blankly inexpressive if they had been 
 managed with less subtle perception of the 
 deeper possibilities of the subject. But this 
 very reserve gives the picture much of its 
 strangely sympathetic beauty, and increases its 
 hold upon the feelings of all people who are not 
 satisfied with the superficialities of pictorial art. 
 The attitudes of the figures, the expressions of 
 the faces, the bareness of the landscape against 
 which the group of children is set, and the 
 solemn stillness of the autumn twilight which 
 
48 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 pervades the whole composition are all of value 
 in the carrying out of the artist's intention. The 
 lingering sadness of autumn is throughout the 
 idea which was in his mind, and the way in 
 which this is symbolised in every touch and 
 every detail is well-nigh perfect. 
 
 The picture is also remarkable because it is 
 practically the first in which Millais showed that 
 masterly understanding of the character and 
 ways of children, which was so often and so 
 delightfully displayed in his later production. 
 The young girls who are grouped round the fire 
 of faded leaves are painted with inimitable grace 
 and tenderness. Their unconscious naturalness 
 is wholly charming, their unstudied ease of 
 gesture is extraordinarily well rendered; and 
 there is in the purity of the delicate little faces 
 a suggestion of the innocence of childhood 
 which is exquisitely fresh and attractive. Yet 
 no impossible idealisation spoils the truth of the 
 painting. They are frankly children who play 
 their parts in it, not little angels with none of 
 the instincts of human beings. 
 
 THE VALE OF REST 
 
 Although the public, after having become 
 accustomed to the artist's uncompromising Pre- 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 49 
 
 Raphaelitism, must have been warned by the 
 symbolism of Autumn Leaves of the coming 
 change in his methods, the appearance of his 
 Vale of Rest at the Academy in 1859 caused 
 a very definite sensation. People then found 
 themselves called upon to accept him as a 
 didactic and imaginative moralist. He had, 
 indeed, entered upon his transition, and had 
 moved far from the literalism of Christ in the House 
 of His Parents^ and the obvious actuality of 
 Ophelia^ towards the closely impending de- 
 claration of those individual preferences which 
 were to guide him in the work of the latter half 
 of his life. The Vale of Rest is said to have 
 been of all his paintings the one that Millais 
 estimated most highly; and it is with justice 
 reckoned among the most brilliant achievements 
 which mark great moments in his career. 
 
 It is certainly the picture which combines 
 most surely his power of thought, and his 
 capacity for stating forcibly and dramatically the 
 things which he imagined. There is in it a 
 manly sincerity which cannot be questioned, 
 and there is besides a kind of solemn beauty 
 that comes from his instinctive avoidance of 
 sensationalism and from his naturally correct 
 preference for simplicity of treatment. This 
 
 E 
 
So SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 simplicity and sincerity of manner can always 
 be found in his best paintings, and when applied, 
 as in The Vale of Rest, to the avowal of a strong 
 conviction must be regarded as accountable for 
 the extraordinary persuasiveness of his art. An 
 artist of less straightforward habit of mind would 
 have sought to complicate his statement by 
 adding little things with the idea of stimulating 
 the curiosity of the observer; but Millais was 
 content, when he had found a subject inherently 
 dignified and impressive, to leave it to tell its 
 own story and not to embroider it with trivial 
 accessories. To this reticence is due the monu- 
 mental character of The Vale of Rest ; there is 
 nothing in it to distract attention, and nothing 
 which could jar on the imagination, and so 
 diminish the value of the lesson which it is in- 
 tended to teach. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest triumph of all is the way 
 in which the picture, despite the sadness, the 
 grimness almost, of the subject, escapes mor- 
 bidity. It would have been so easy to introduce 
 into it a touch of fantastic mysticism, or to spoil 
 its mystery by asserting too plainly the moral of 
 the story, but the artist has been proof against 
 every temptation, and has gone through with the 
 work in the way that his wholesome instincts 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 51 
 
 told him would be most correct. The dominant 
 note is one of peace, and the restfulness of the 
 secluded convent graveyard in which the last act 
 of the drama of life is played typifies truly the 
 long sleep which comes at last to end the troubles 
 and strivings of humanity. None of the turmoil 
 of the world intrudes into this vale of rest, and 
 even nature herself is in sympathy with its gentle 
 calm. 
 
 SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ 
 
 If the Vale of Rest marks significantly the 
 transition through which Millais passed before 
 he finally found the way that he followed for the 
 last thirty years of his life, the Souvenir of 
 Velasquez shows decisively what was the nature 
 of the change that came over his art. Between 
 1859 and 1867 he seemed to have settled down 
 into a habit of careful and rather laborious 
 manipulation and to have become a confirmed 
 lover of high finish and a scrupulous exponent 
 of what were almost unnecessary realities. But 
 suddenly, in 1868, he threw all this minute pre- 
 cision aside and avowed himself to be a robust 
 impressionist, glorying in his power to give by a 
 few large and summary touches a vivid suggestion 
 of many facts, and eager to render great effects 
 
52 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 rather than microscopically analysed and elabor- 
 ately assorted details. There was no mistaking 
 this change and no explaining it away. It meant 
 that he had abandoned once and for ever all 
 that had remained to him of the restrictions of 
 the Pre-Raphaelite method and had begun to 
 apply its principles in such a way that he could 
 aim henceforth at the highest flights of executive 
 expression. 
 
 Among the many pictures which he produced 
 at this period to prove how completely the wish 
 to rival the great executants of other schools had 
 possessed him, the Souvenir of Velasquez stands 
 out as the cleverest in craftsmanship, and the 
 most delightful in feeling. It is not merely an 
 amazingly direct piece of brushwork in which 
 every touch shows the hand of a master of 
 technical contrivance, but as a reflection of the 
 spirit of childhood it deserves, as well, to be 
 spoken of as a veritable inspiration. The beauty 
 of the face is very remarkable, and there is 
 a pretty stateliness in the pose of the young 
 sitter which accords perfectly with the old-world 
 costume in which she is represented. As the 
 title implies, the general arrangement and treat- 
 ment of the picture were suggested by the 
 practice of the great Spanish master, but this 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 53 
 
 Souvenir is a great deal more than a copy of the 
 methods of another artist ; it has in full measure 
 the personal qualities by which almost everything 
 that Millais touched was distinguished. 
 
 That this performance was not a happy 
 accident, one of those chance successes which 
 sometimes come to an artist as a result of a 
 fortunate combination of circumstances, was 
 put beyond doubt by the character of his con- 
 tributions to the Academy exhibitions during the 
 next half dozen years. He fully maintained the 
 high level of executive performance at which he 
 had arrived, and continued steadily to widen the 
 scope of his activity. There seemed to be no 
 problem of handling which he was unprepared 
 to attack and no difficulty that he feared as 
 insurmountable. 
 
 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE 
 
 In this work, painted in 1874, he displayed 
 his strength in a large and ambitious composi- 
 tion. As a subject picture it may fairly be 
 reckoned as the most complete assertion of 
 his mature conviction that he ever put before 
 the public. Its motive was one calculated to 
 appeal vividly to his militant instincts, and was 
 
54 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 suited in every way to his robust and energetic 
 personality. The idea of indomitable persever- 
 ance in the face of apparently overwhelming 
 dangers, of tenacious effort to triumphantly ac- 
 complish a great intention, was quite in accord- 
 ance with his natural sympathies; and the 
 picture has therefore an inner significance to 
 which almost as much interest attaches as to its 
 outward aspect of unhesitating certainty. It is, 
 perhaps, a little unequal in execution, but parts 
 of it are magnificent, and especially the head of 
 the old seaman, who sits at the table and listens 
 to the story of Arctic exploration that is being 
 read to him by the girl seated at his feet The 
 sitter for this splendid study of rugged age was 
 Mr. Trelawny, the friend of Shelley and Byron. 
 According to his usual custom Millais did 
 little more than suggest in the picture the story 
 implied by the title. The North- West Passage 
 is not an illustrative painting of adventures in 
 the Arctic region, but a piece of domestic genre 
 on a large scale intended rather to stimulate the 
 imagination than to record something actually 
 accomplished. But to every thinking man it is 
 wanting in nothing that gives interest to a work 
 of art. It teaches an admirable lesson and 
 points a moral well worth attention ; and in its 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 55 
 
 combination of strenuousness and simple direct- 
 ness, it reflects exactly the nature of one of the 
 frankest and least self-conscious of men. The 
 canvas is a tribute to the many great personalities 
 whose lives have been devoted to the making of 
 our national history, and, rightly understood, it 
 is an eloquent appeal to us all to follow worthily 
 in their footsteps. 
 
 A YEOMAN OF THE GUARD 
 
 Another masterpiece exhibited three years 
 later has now found a permanent resting-place in 
 the National Gallery. This riotous and gorgeous 
 exercise in strong colour could only have 
 been accomplished by an artist whose splendid 
 audacity was equalled by his knowledge of his 
 craft. The scarlet uniform, with its lavish em- 
 broidery of black and gold and picturesque 
 fashion, was something that exactly suited his 
 fancy ; and he revelled in his struggle with the 
 many problems of technique which such a sub- 
 ject presented for solution. Yet there is little 
 sign in the picture that he found it more than 
 usually exacting ; and there is no evidence that 
 he devoted to it an exceptional amount of 
 labour. It is particularly memorable for its 
 
56 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 consistent and thorough treatment, for the sound 
 judgment with which every variation of the colour 
 and every component part of the design have 
 been managed; and it seems to have been 
 carried through without hesitation or change of 
 intention. It is an unfaltering record of a clearly 
 defined impression, and is not less interesting 
 on account of the sensitive and characteristic 
 rendering of the worn, old face of the model 
 than as a piece of still life painting of quite 
 extraordinary force. The qualities that make it 
 great are those which distinguish the produc- 
 tions of none but the unquestionable masters of 
 pictorial art. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 The Portrait of Thomas Carlyle has qualities 
 scarcely less commanding, though it did not 
 offer such opportunities for the display of mas- 
 terly contrivance as were afforded by the Yeoman 
 of the Guard. To deal with masses of strong 
 colour, or to attempt audacities of brushwork, 
 would not have been correct in a simple pre- 
 sentation of a modern man. But even without 
 any spectacular additions this picture is a re- 
 markable one, because it reveals so plainly the 
 discernment of character which had much to do 
 
[National Portrait Gallery. 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS 57 
 
 with the success that Millais gained in por- 
 traiture. He cannot be said to have spared 
 Carlyle in his analysis, nor to have tried to 
 soften off the angularities of disposition which 
 made the grim old sage more feared than loved 
 by the people with whom he came in contact. 
 The face is frankly that of a man who has been 
 soured by the warfare of life; it is hard, dog- 
 matic, fierce perhaps, and certainly intolerant, 
 but it is keenly intellectual and shrewdly reflec- 
 tive. There is courage and firmness of convic- 
 tion in every line, and the instinct of the tena- 
 cious fighter is declared in all the rugged and 
 rough-hewn features. The unflinching gaze of 
 the angry eyes, deep-set under the lowering 
 brows, is wonderfully suggested, and the cynical, 
 contemptuous mouth is magnificently drawn with- 
 out any trace of caricature. That such a man 
 should have summed up humanity as " mostly 
 fools " would seem natural enough to every one 
 who studies this portrait ; the Carlyle that Mil- 
 lais has put on record for us does not look like 
 a lover of his species, nor like a man who would 
 find much pleasure in the society of his fellows. 
 Perhaps the painter has been too severe to 
 such a breezy enthusiast Carlyle must have been 
 more than a little repellent but he has indis- 
 
58 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 putably been perfectly consistent in his state- 
 ment of what he considered to be the right 
 reading of the complex character of his famous 
 sitter. 
 
THE CHIEF WORKS OF MILLAIS 
 IN PUBLIC GALLERIES, ETC. 
 
 NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 The Yeoman of the Guard. 1876. 4 ft. 7 in. 
 
 by 3 ft. Sin. (1494.) 
 Portrait of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 1879. 4 ft. i in. by 3 ft. (1666.) 
 
 TATE GALLERY. 
 
 Ophelia. 1852. 2 ft. 6 in. by 3 ft. 8 in. (1506.) 
 
 Tate Gift. 
 The Vale of Rest. 1858. 3 ft. 4 in. by 5 ft. 
 
 7 in. (1507.) Tate Gift. 
 The Knight Errant. 1870. 6 ft. by 4 ft. 5 in. 
 
 (1508.) Tate Gift. 
 The North-West Passage. 1874. 5ft. gin. 
 
 by 7 ft. 4 in. (1509.) Tate Gift. 
 Mercy St. Bartholomew's Day 1572. 1886. 
 
 6 ft. i in. by 4 ft. 4 in. (1510.) Tate Gift. 
 Saint Stephen. 1895. 5 ft. by 3 ft. 9 in. 
 
 (1563.) Tate Gift. 
 59 
 
60 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 A Disciple. 1895. 4 ft. i in. by 2 ft. n in. 
 (1564.) TateGift. 
 
 Speak ! Speak ! 1895. 5 ft - 6 in - by 6 ft. 
 ii in. (1584.) Chantrey Bequest. 
 
 The Order of Release 1746. 1853. 3 ft. 
 4 in. by 2 ft. 5 in. (1657.) Tate Gift. 
 
 The Boyhood of Raleigh. (1691.) 4 ft. by 
 4 ft. 8 in. Gift of Lady Tate. (1870.) 
 
 A Maid offering a Basket of Fruit to a 
 Cavalier. 6 in. by 4! in. (1807.) Be- 
 queathed by Mr. Henry Vaughan. 
 
 Charles I. and his Son in the Studio of Van 
 Dyck. 6 in. by 4! in. (1808.) Be- 
 queathed by Mr. Henry Vaughan. 
 
 Equestrian Portrait. 1882. 10 ft. 5 in. by 
 7 ft. 7 in. (1503.) Anonymous donor. 
 
 N.B. Sir Edwin Landseer painted the gray 
 palfrey with the gorgeous accoutrements, 
 intending it for an equestrian portrait of 
 Queen Victoria, but this was never carried 
 out, and ultimately the picture was sent to 
 Millais, who painted his daughter, now 
 Mrs. James, in this old riding costume, 
 together with the page, the dog, and the 
 background, and called the picture "Nell 
 Gwynne." It is also sometimes known as 
 Diana Vernon. 
 
CHIEF WORKS OF MILLAIS 61 
 
 It is initialled both by Landseer and 
 Millais, and the date is that of its completion 
 by Millais. 
 
 NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 The Earl of Beaconsfield. A copy by Boyle 
 from Millais' portrait. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. 1877. An unfinished por- 
 trait. 3 ft. 9 in. by 2 ft. 10 in. 
 
 William Wilkie Collins, the novelist. 1 1 in. 
 by 7 in. 
 
 John Leech, caricaturist. In water-colours. 
 1 1 in. by 9 in. 
 
 BIRMINGHAM ART GALLERY. 
 
 The Widow's Mite. 1869. 3 ft. 10 in. by 
 2ft. 7 in. (171.) 
 
 The Blind Girl. 1856. Pre-Raphaelite work. 
 2 ft. 8 in. by i ft. 9 in. (172.) Presented 
 by the Rt. Hon. William Kenrick. 
 
 BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY, QUEEN 
 
 VICTORIA ST., LONDON. 
 Portrait of the Earl of Shaftesbury. 1877. 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. 
 
 Portrait of the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 
 1885. 
 
62 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 The Bridesmaid. ("All Hallows' E'en.") 
 1851. 
 
 THE GARRICK CLUB, LONDON. 
 Portrait of Sir Henry Irving. 1884. 
 
 INSTITUTE OF CIVIL ENGINEERS, LONDON. 
 Portrait of Sir John Fowler, Bart., C.E. 
 1868. 
 
 LEEDS ART GALLERY 
 Childhood. ^ 
 
 Youth. 
 
 Manhood. 
 
 Age. 
 
 Music. 
 
 Art. 
 
 A series of panels for lunettes 
 formerly in the Judges' Lodg- 
 ings in Leeds. Painted in 
 1847. 
 
 LIVERPOOL ART GALLERY. 
 
 Lorenzo and Isabella. 1849. Pre-Raphaelite 
 
 work. 4 ft. 9 in. by 3 ft. 4 in. Purchased 
 
 in 1884. (337.) 
 The Martyr of the Solway, in 1680. 1870. 
 
 i ft. 10 in. by 2 ft. 4 in. Presented by Mr. 
 
 George Holt in 1895. (5 2 5-) 
 
CHIEF WORKS OF MILLAIS 63 
 
 MANCHESTER ART GALLERY. 
 
 Autumn Leaves. 1856. Pre-Raphaelite work. 
 3 ft. 5 in. by 2 ft. 5 in. (144.) Bought from 
 the Leathart Collection. 
 
 A Flood. 1870. 3 ft. 2 in. by 4 ft. 8 in. 
 (145.) From the Matthews Collection. 
 
 "Victory, O Lord!" 1871. 6ft. 4 in. by 
 4ft. 6 in. (171.) Bought from the Exe- 
 cutors of Mrs. Reiss, 1894. 
 
 THE CORPORATION OF MANCHESTER. 
 Portrait of Bishop Fraser. 1880. 
 Portrait of Queen Alexandra when Princess 
 of Wales. 1886. 
 
 NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA. 
 
 Portrait of the Marquis of Lome, now Duke 
 of Argyll. 1884. 
 
 NEW SOUTH WALES GALLERY, AUSTRALIA. 
 The Captive. 1882. 
 
 THE CORPORATION OF OLDHAM. 
 
 Portrait of T. O. Barlow, R.A. 1886. 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY GALLERY. 
 Portrait of Thomas Combe. 1850. 
 Return of the Dove to the Ark. 1851. 
 
64 SIR JOHN MILLAIS 
 
 THE ROYAL ACADEMY, BURLINGTON HOUSE 
 
 DIPLOMA GALLERY. 
 A Souvenir of Velasquez. 1868. 
 
 ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLEGE, EGHAM. 
 The Princes in the Tower. 1878. 
 The Princess Elizabeth. 1879. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE MUSEUM, STRATFORD ON- AVON. 
 Portrait of Lord Ronald Gower. 1876. 
 
 ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL, LONDON. 
 Portrait of Sir James Paget. 1872. 
 Portrait of Luther Holden, P.R.C.S. 1880. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 
 
 Portrait of the Rev. John Caird, D.D. 1881. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. 
 Portrait of George Grote. 1871. 
 
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