John Everett Millais

Background

John Everett Millais was born on June 8, 1829 in Southampton. His parents were John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais. His parents recognized his precocious talent and moved to London when John was 9.

Education

His mother's "forceful personality" was the most powerful influence on his early life. She had a keen interest in art and music, and encouraged her son's artistic bent, promoting the relocating of the family to London to help develop contacts at the Royal Academy of Art.

His prodigious artistic talent won him a place at the Royal Academy schools at the unprecedented age of eleven.

Career

Millais's close friend William Holman Hunt was formulating new ideas under the influence of John Keats's poetry and John Ruskin's Modern Painters. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Inspired by this new approach, Millais painted Lorenzo and Isabella (1849), from Keats's Isabella, and Christ in the House of His Parents (1850). The latter painting was exhibited in the academy in 1850; Charles Dickens said it showed "the lowest depths of what is mean, repulsive, and revolting, " but it was strongly defended by Ruskin, who subsequently became a close friend of Millais. Their friendship ended in 1855, when Millais married Mrs. Ruskin a year after the annulment of her marriage.

Millais's Huguenot and Ophelia, exhibited in 1852, were immediate public successes. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began to break up, and Millais's last works in this style, the Blind Girl and Autumn Leaves (both 1856), although among his best, were not well received. His former serious sense of purpose now gave way to a more direct popular appeal. The Black Brunswicker was a deliberate and successful attempt to repeat the popularity of the Huguenot. In 1863 he was elected a royal academician and became established as a fashionable artist.

During the 1860s Millais abandoned his earlier meticulous technique and developed a more fluent style, often painting directly onto the canvas, with few preparatory drawings, and rendering detail with almost impressionistic freedom. Outstanding among his many distinguished portraits is that of Mrs. Bischoffsheim, which illustrates the technical virtuosity that won him many honors and such acclaim at European exhibitions. Perhaps his most widely known portrait was of his grandson "Bubbles"; its enormous popularity as an advertisement infuriated the artist.

Apart from rather sentimental genre subjects, such as the Yeomen of the Guard (1876), Millais painted a series of remarkable landscapes, beginning with Chill October (1870), and his St. Stephen (1894) is an example of the religious themes to which he returned at the end of his life.

He died later in the same year from throat cancer. He was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.

Achievements

• Sir John Everett Millais an English painter of great technical brilliance, was a founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
  
  In July 1885, Queen Victoria created him a Baronet, of Palace Gate, in the parish of St Mary Abbot, Kensington, in the county of Middlesex, and of Saint Ouen, in the Island of Jersey, making him the first artist to be honoured with a Hereditary Title.
  
  When Millais died in 1896, the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII) chaired a memorial committee, which commissioned a statue of the artist. This was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (now Tate Britain) in the garden on the east side in 1905. On 23 November that year, the Pall Mall Gazette called it "a breezy statue, representing the man in the characteristic attitude in which we all knew him".

Works

More photos

• book

  • The life and letters of Sir John Everett Millais (v.1): president of the Royal Academy

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais, Bt Mariana 1851 by Celestial Images | 16 x 20

    (e with pre-installed hanging hardware built into the fram...)

  • Imagekind Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais, Bt Miss Anne Ryan by Celestial Images | 11 x 14

    (e with pre-installed hanging hardware built into the fram...)

  • Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais - The Captive (1882) by Celestial Images | 32 x 48

    (e with pre-installed hanging hardware built into the fram...)

  • Millais: Portraits

    ( John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was one of the most ce...)

  • Imagekind Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais, Bt Hearts Are Trumps 187 by Celestial Images | 32 x 24

    (Poster Print entitled 'Sir John Everett Millais, Bt Heart...)

  • The Life And Letters Of Sir John Everett Millais V2 (1899)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais - 24"x36" Poster

    (Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais - 24"x36" Poster Kit...)

  • Imagekind Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais 1829-1896 PORTRAIT OF K by Celestial Images | 30 x 48

    (e with a 365 day workmanship guarantee. Archival-quality ...)

  • Wall Art Print entitled Bubbles, 1886 by The Fine Art Masters | 11 x 16

    (Poster Print entitled 'Bubbles, 1886 '. Multiple sizes av...)

  • Imagekind Wall Art Print entitled Sir John Everett Millais, Bt The Boyhood Of Raleig by Celestial Images | 13 x 11

    (e with a 365 day workmanship guarantee. Archival-quality ...)

  • Wall Art Print entitled SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, A GIRL COMBING HER HAIR by Celestial Images | 10 x 16

    (e with a 365 day workmanship guarantee. Inks used are lat...)

Views

Quotations: "Man was not intended to live alone. .. marriage is the best cure for that wretched lingering over one's work. I think I must feel more settled than you all. I would immensely like to see you all married like myself and anchored. "

Membership

Millais 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 elected president of the Royal Academy in February 1896.

Connections

In 1855, after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled, Effie and John Millais married. He and Effie eventually had eight children: Everett, born in 1856; George, born in 1857; Effie, born in 1858; Mary, born in 1860; Alice, born in 1862; Geoffroy, born in 1863; John in 1865; and Sophie in 1868. Their youngest son, John Guille Millais, became a notable naturalist, wildlife artist, and Millais's posthumous biographer. Their daughter Alice, later Alice Stuart-Wortley, was a close friend and muse of the composer Edward Elgar, and is thought to be an inspiration for themes in his Violin Concerto.

Effie's younger sister Sophy Gray sat for several pictures by Millais, prompting some speculation about the nature of their apparently fond relationship.

Father:

John William Millais

Mother:

Emily Mary Millais

Spouse:

Euphemia Chalmers Millais, Lady Millais

(née Gray; 7 May 1828 – 23 December 1897)

Daughter:

Effie

(born in 1858)

Daughter:

Sophie

(1868)

Daughter:

Alice

(born in 1862)

Daughter:

Mary

(born in 1860)

Son:

John Guille "Johnny" Millais

(24 March 1865 – 24 March 1931)

Son:

Geoffroy

( born in 1863)

Son:

George

( born in 1857)

Son:

Everett

( born in 1856)

References

• Victorian Painting
• Sir John Everett Millais
• Millais And His Works: With Special Reference To The Exhibition At The Royal Academy, 1898 (1898)
• Pre-Raphaelite Painters. With a descriptive catalogue by John Gere. (British Art
• Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais (British Art and Visual Culture since 1750 New Readings)