Room 2: Romance and Modern Genre

From around 1852 Millais’s art struck out in a new direction, entering its mature Pre-Raphaelite phase. Medievalism and wilful distortions of form gave way to a wider range of subjects which were more open-ended in meaning and invited an emotional response from the viewer. During the 1850s he developed a new type of historical anecdotal painting that focused on ordinary people trapped in situations of conflict, as well as scenes from contemporary life. While Millais continued to aim at precision, he began to experiment with looser brushwork, varying the degree of finish within a picture.

Given the broad appeal of Millais’s art, his style was still viewed as defiantly eccentric. His figure types were often criticised for being plain and even ugly and his narratives hard to decipher. It was at this time that Millais found it difficult to sell his work despite its powerful sensory appeal.

“I thought, some time ago, that this painter was likely to be headed by others of the [Pre-Raphaelite] school; but Titian himself could hardly head him now. This picture is as brilliant in invention as consummate in executive power… I see no limit to what the painter may hope in future to achieve. I am not sure whether he may not be destined to surpass all that has yet been done in figure-painting, as Turner did all past landscape.”
John Ruskin, Academy Notes, 1856
Referring to John Everett Millais Peace Concluded, 1856 1856

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John Everett Millais
The Order of Release, 1746 1852-3
Oil on canvas
Tate. Presented by Sir Henry Tate, 1898
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This picture depicts a scene following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden. Effie Ruskin posed for the Scotswoman with a written order freeing her wounded husband from an English jail. Her expression is a masterpiece of psychological intensity, her drained features revealing defiance and subjugation, as her husband and son collapse against her. Details such as the spray of the dog’s tail and child’s hands show Millais’s mastery of realism in the service of emotional intensity.

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John Everett Millais
Tear Him to Pieces (Foxhunting) 1854
Pen and ink
Lent by the Geoffroy Richard Everett Millais Collection

This picture depicts a scene following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden. Effie Ruskin posed for the Scotswoman with a written order freeing her wounded husband from an English jail. Her expression is a masterpiece of psychological intensity, her drained features revealing defiance and subjugation, as her husband and son collapse against her. Details such as the spray of the dog’s tail and child’s hands show Millais’s mastery of realism in the service of emotional intensity.

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John Everett Millais
The Proscribed Royalist, 1651 1852-3
Oil on canvas
Lent by The Lord Lloyd Webber

Building on A Huguenot’s public success, this scene shows lovers in threatening circumstances during the English Civil War. A Cavalier who has been proscribed, or condemned to death, kisses the hand of a Puritan woman from the womb-like cavity of a massive tree. The date 1651 refers to the Battle of Worcester and the incident when Charles II hid in an oak. Millais painted the background at a wooded location near Hayes in Kent.

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John Everett Millais
Waiting 1854
Oil on wood
Lent by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

The spring after being elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in November of 1853, Millais painted this modest, suggestive work in a style that moved away from the sharp detail of the Ruskin portrait on view in this room. The ambiguity of her expression – is she anxious, expectant, conspiratorial? – matches the somewhat unresolved and free painting style in the foreground, as compared to the concision of narrative and landscape in earlier Pre-Raphaelitism.

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John Everett Millais
The Blind Girl 1854-6
Oil on canvas
Lent by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Presented by the Rt Hon William Kendrick 1892

The story of a blind vagrant relates to the social themes Millais explored in his monochromatic modern-life drawings of the period. Here, however, exploding colours and rich details reveal the full range of the senses in the double rainbow that marks the passing of a storm, the butterfly, the concertina, and the scent of flowers and moist earth. In the background is the church in Winchelsea where Millais painted L’Enfant du Régiment, also in this room.

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John Everett Millais
The Rescue 1855
Oil on canvas
Lent by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1924

Inspired by a brewery fire Millais witnessed, and a rare painting of physical action, this scene of modern life shows a fireman carrying three small children he has saved from a blaze, the youngest of whom he delivers into the embrace of their anxious mother. Ruskin praised The Rescue, writing ‘it is the only great picture exhibited this year’, clearly impressed by this novel scene of nocturnal heroism.

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John Everett Millais
The Black Brunswicker 1859-60
Oil on canvas
Lent by National Museums Liverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery

This painting revives the formula of A Huguenot, also in this room, and thrust Millais to unrivalled national popularity. The setting is 15 June 1815. A German Brunswicker cavalryman parts from his lover before the initial defence against Napoleon’s army in ‘that world-earthquake’, as Tennyson memorably referred to the battle of Waterloo. His hat’s prominent skull and crossbones reveal his identity and his almost certain fate, for the Brunswickers suffered extreme losses the next day.

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John Everett Millais
The Ransom 1860-2
Oil on canvas
Lent by The J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This invented scene of a knight paying for the safe return of his daughters reveals Millais’s collaborative and novel methods. Effie and his mother made the dresses, the Flemish tapestry was painted in the South Kensington Museum, the knight’s head was modelled by Millais’s brother’s friend Major Boothby and his body by a Perth railway guard named Strong. The kidnappers on the far right were posed by a labourer and a major in the 92nd Highlanders regiment.

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John Everett Millais
A Dream of Fair Women: Cleopatra 1857
Proof wood engraving by William James Linton Published in Poems by Alfred Tennyson, Edward Moxon, London, 1857. Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This is one of two illustrations Millais produced for Tennyson’s poem A Dream of Fair Women included in the Moxon Tennyson. The poet imagines that he meets many ‘Fair Women’, including ‘Fair Rosamund’ and Cleopatra. They each recount their lives to him. Millais shows Cleopatra far from her native Egypt, revealing the snakebite that ended her life. Millais’s drawing is shown below.

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John Everett Millais
A Dream of Fair Women: Cleopatra 1857
Pen and ink with scratching out, mounted with proof wood engraving by William James Linton Published in Poems by Alfred Tennyson, Edward Moxon, London, 1857. Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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John Everett Millais
The Bridge of Sighs 1858
Etching
Published in Passages from the Poems of Thomas Hood Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, London 1858
Lent from the Geoffroy Richard Everett Millais Collection

A young woman stands by the river Thames, holding a child who, presumably born through an adulterous relationship, is the cause of her despair. The suicide of such women was a concern of Victorian society and Waterloo Bridge, pictured along with Saint Paul’s in the background, became known as the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ or ‘The Arch of Suicide’.

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John Everett Millais
Love about 1862
Pen and ink and blue watercolour wash
Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This work relates to Millais’s illustration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Love (1799), in which a man tells a ‘doleful tale’ to seduce Guinevere, whom he loves. The woman is enchanted by his tragic story of a knight who dies trying to rescue his lover, and is unable to resist him. Millais shows them embracing in a dense, moonlit forest, the rabbit in the background the only witness to their love.

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John Everett Millais
Parables of Our Lord
The Lost Sheep 1864
Issued in 1863, dated 1864
Wood engravings by the Brothers Dalziel Illustrations
from Parables of Our Lord, Routledge, London 1864
Tate. Presented by Gilbert Dalziel 1924
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Millais’s famous designs illustrating the Parables represent his continued focus on religious themes in his art. They are also remarkable as evidence of a growing fascination with the landscape of Perthshire – the dramatic outcropping in The Lost Sheep and spreading conifers in the images reveal his immersion in Scottish scenery.

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John Everett Millais
Parables of Our Lord
The Prodigal Son 1864
Issued in 1863, dated 1864
Wood engravings by the Brothers Dalziel Illustrations
from Parables of Our Lord, Routledge, London 1864
Tate. Presented by Gilbert Dalziel 1924
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John Everett Millais
Parables of Our Lord
The Sower 1864
Issued in 1863, dated 1864
Wood engravings by the Brothers Dalziel Illustrations
from Parables of Our Lord, Routledge, London 1864
Tate. Presented by Gilbert Dalziel 1924
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John Everett Millais
The Hidden Treasure 1864
Issued in 1863, dated 1864
Wood engravings by the Brothers Dalziel Illustrations
from Parables of Our Lord, Routledge, London 1864
Tate. Presented by Gilbert Dalziel 1924
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Room 3