Room Guide

• Room 1: Pre-Raphaelitism
• Room 2: Romance and Modern Genre
• Room 3: Aestheticism
• Room 4: The Grand Tradition
• Room 5: Fancy Pictures
• Room 6: Portraits
• Room 7: The Late Landscapes

Room 5: Fancy Pictures

The ‘fancy picture’ first came into existence during the eighteenth century and can be described as genre painting where the sentiment takes precedence over evolved narrative. It was as a father that Millais first began to experiment with the category, as the eight children he and Effie produced between 1856 and 1868 were pressed into service as sitters. Millais developed the fancy picture into a more lucrative kind of painting as he evolved a more painterly style in emulation of past masters who specialised in the genre like Reynolds and Gainsborough. Parody became a means of acknowledging lineage with the past as Millais began to quote from these painters who themselves borrowed from older masters such as Van Dyck.

In taking on a genre widely perceived to have degenerated into something rather trite and whimsical, Millais sought to elevate it by imbuing his child subjects with a sense of mortality. Emblems suggesting the fragility of existence such as flowers, birds and bubbles were common in these works, and models were often posed as philosophers lost in thought or contemplating the beauty and transience of the natural world.

“Miss Edie Ramage was the belle of the fancy dress ball given by the Graphic in the year the work was produced. She impersonated Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Penelope Boothby, and was thought to be so charming that she was again dressed in the character and carried off to the artist’s studio. He was so delighted with his little model that it was agreed on the spot that he should paint a portrait of the child, and that the price should be a thousand guineas… So popular was the picture, it is said, that of the coloured reproduction which appeared in the Graphic in 1880 600,000 copies were sold, and that had the unsatisfied orders been met the issue would have reached a million; indeed, the publisher had to return several thousand pounds in cash and sustain actions at law for damages of non-delivery. ”
MH Spielmann, Millais and His Works, 1898 Referring to John Everett Millais Cherry Ripe 1879

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John Everett Millais
Waking 1865
Oil on canvas
Lent by Perth Museum & Art Gallery, Perth & Kinross Council, Scotland

Millais posed his second daughter Mary for this image of a young girl sitting bolt upright, stirred by birdsong. It represents a blended stylistic approach: the heavy knitted blanket and its tasselled edge bunched around the bed frame rendered with Pre-Raphaelite precision, the decorative bands of colour and abrupt cropping more indicative of Aestheticism.

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John Everett Millais
‘The Little Speedwell’s Darling Blue’ 1891-2
Oil on canvas
Lent by National Museums Liverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery

The model in this picture was the artist’s granddaughter Phyllis, sister of Willie James who posed for Bubbles (also on display in this room). The title, a quotation from Tennyson’s In Memoriam, comes from a section of the poem that expresses the soul’s longing for the regenerative effects of spring. In the painting this feeling is conveyed by the delicate speedwell, one of the first flowers to open at the onset of the season.

Room 6