John Everett Millais was a British artist who worked as a painter and illustrator. The genres in which he created his artworks included history, genre, landscapes, and portraits. The artist is well-known as one of the co-founders of the artistic Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement.
Background
Ethnicity:
John Everett Millais’s parents had Norman origins, but they came from the family who moved to Jersey and had lived there for many generations.
John Everett Millais was born on June 8, 1829, in Southampton, United Kingdom. He was a son of John William Millais, a prosperous gentleman, and Emily Mary Millais, who came from the family of wealthy saddlers.
John had an elder brother, William Henry Millais, also an artist, and two sisters, Mary Elizabeth Millais and Ellen Amelia Millais.
Millais spent his childhood in Jersey, and at the age of nine, he moved with his family to London.
Fascinated by art and music, Millais’s mother played an important role in the artistic development of her youngest son. As to Millais’s father, he also was talented in music and took part in the art fairs.
Education
John Everett Millais revealed his artistic talent an the early age.
The young boy received his first painting lessons from Mr. Bessel, the best drawing-master in Jersey.
Encouraged by his parents to pursue his artistic training, the young boy became a student of Sass's Art School in 1838.
Later, at the age of eleven, John entered the Royal Academy Schools. Millais was a brilliant student: while studying, he received a lot of prizes, such as silver medal in 1843 for his replica of the antique and the gold one in 1847 for the painting The Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughters of Shiloh.
At the Academy, John Everett Millais met William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The beginning of John Everett Millais’s artistic career can be marked from the participation at the exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1846 where the young painter presented his Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru. A year later, he demonstrated there his other artwork called Elgiva seized by the Soldiers of Odo. The same year, he took part in the competition at Westminster Hall. The artist represented his variant for the decoration of the houses of parliament, the painting titled The Widow's Mite, which was rejected.
In 1848, Millais along with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, created as an alternative to the contemporary academic painting.
The first paintings which the artist created in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Lorenzo and Isabella, and Christ in the House of His Parents, dated to 1849 and to 1850, were demonstrated to the public the years of its creation at the Royal Academy of Arts. The latter picture received strong critical reviews from a novelist Charles Dickens.
True popularity came to the artist when he exhibited his Huguenot in 1851. Other successful creations of this period included The Woodman's Daughter from a poem by Patmore, Mariana of the Moated Grange, The Proscribed Royalist, Ophelia (1851), The Return of the Dove to the Ark (1851), and The Order of Release (1853). The last three were demonstrated at the Paris Exhibition of 1855.
Since this time, Millais tried his hand as an illustrator. He illustrated the Moxon edition of Tennyson's poems in 1857, some Anthony Trollope’s novels, Parables by George Dalziel and collaborated with the periodicals Good Words and Once a Week (1859).
The next decade was marked by the changes in the artist’s style which shifted to more fluent and somehow similar to the impressionist manner. The most important pictures of this time were The Eve of St Agnes, remarkable for the painting of moonlight, Romans leaving Britain (1865), Jephthah (1867), Rosalind and Celia (1868), A Flood, and The Boyhood of Raleigh (1870).
At the beginning of the 1870s, Millais produced his first portraits and landscapes, among which the most remarkable was Chill October. In fact, most of his landscapes depicted Scottish county Perthshire where John often hunted and went fishing. As to his human models, the painter portrayed such personalities as William Gladstone, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Cardinal Newman and Charles Dickens after his death.
Other topics of Millais’s later works became history and religion what can be seen in The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878), The Northwest Passage (1874) and the Boyhood of Raleigh (1871).
In 1886, he created a painting titled Bubbles which was used for an advertising company of Pears soap.
The last period of John Everett Millais’s professional career was related to the academic activity. So, in 1896, the artist succeeded Frederic Leighton on his post of the President of the Royal Academy of Arts. John Everett Millais had held the position for two years, till his death.
Achievements
John Everett Millais was a prolific painter and illustrator whose great technical brilliance was marked since his childhood and youth. So, he was the youngest student of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Millais contributed to the development of the world art: he was among the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement.
Millais’s artistic achievements were marked by the title of the Baronet given to him by Queen Victoria.
After the artist death, according to the commission of the Prince of Wales, the painter’s statue was installed at the front of the National Gallery of British Art (currently Tate Britain) in 1905. Later, the sculpture was transferred to the side of the building.
A huge retrospective of Millais’s artworks was organized at the Tate Britain in London in 2007. The number of its visitors attended more than 150 thousand people. In total, while travelling around the world, including Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the exhibition was seen by about 660 thousand visitors.
The personal life and professional career of John Everett Millais were featured in many movies, such as The Love of John Ruskin of 1912 telling the story of relationships between the artist, John Ruskin and Euphemia Chalmers Gray. The artist’s personality inspired Emma Thompson, the author of the movie Effie Gray (2014), to feature him as the character Tom Sturridge. Despite, The Pre-Raphaelite movement became the theme for the couple of BBC’s period dramas, in particular, The Love School of 1975 and Desperate Romantics of 2009.
The Tribe of Benjamin Seizing the Daughter of Shiloh
Christ in the House of His Parents
Saint Bartholemew’s Day
Portrait of Gracia Lees
Merry
Mariana
Portrait of Wilkie Collins
Emily Patmore
Mariana in the Moated Grange
Cinderella
The Blind Girl
John Ruskin
Jephthah
The Royalist
Moorish Chief Engraving
Beauty
The Bridesmaid
Dew Drenched Furze
Winter Fuel
Portrait of Lord Alfred Tennyson
Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind
Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru
Princes in The Tower
Apple Blossoms
Waiting
Ferdinand Lured by Ariel
North West Passage
Lorenzo and Isabella
The Minuet
Miss Eveleen Tennant
Autumn Leaves
A Winter’s Tale
View Near Hampstead
Yes
Ophelia
Joan of Arc
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge
My Second Sermon
Little Speedwell’s Darling Blue
The Order of Release
The Matyr of the Solway
James Wyatt and His Granddaughter Mary
Madame Bischoffsheim
Caller Herrin'
The Piper
Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Nelson
Hearts are Trumps
The Nest
Christmas-Eve
My First Sermon
The Crown of Love
Vanessa
Swallow, Swallow
Glen Birnam
The Woodman’s Daughter
Sweetest Eyes That Were Ever Seen…
Louise Jopling
Cherry Ripe
Cymon and Iphigenia
Lear and Cordelia
A Jersey Lily, Portrait of Lillie Langtry
Flowing to the River
The Knight Errant
The Eve of Saint Agnes
The Black Brunswicker
Rosalind in the Forest
Mary Chamberlain
A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford
Portrait of John Everett Millais
Twins (Grace and Kate Hoare)
Clarissa
The Honourable John Nevile Manners
Message From the Sea
John Henry Newman
Portrait of Mrs William Evamy, the Artist’s Aunt
Portia
A Souvenir of Velazquez
The Lost Piece of Silver
Elgiva Seized by Order of Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury
Portrait of Margaret Fuller Maitland
Red Riding Hood
Pearl of Great Price
The Girlhood of Saint Teresa
Once a Week
Sir John Everett Pippa
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
Associate Member
Royal Academy of Arts
,
United Kingdom
November 7, 1853
Royal Academician
Royal Academy of Arts
,
United Kingdom
December 18, 1863
Personality
John Everett Millais was cheerful, energetic person who always had his own opinion. However, he was well mannered man.
He was manly, frank and genial, devoted to his art and his family and greatly loved by a very large circle of friends.
Physical Characteristics:
John Everett Millais was tall and slightly built.
Interests
shooting, hunting, salmon fishing, cricket
Artists
Alfred Tennyson, John Keats
Connections
John Everett Millais married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, an ex-wife of John Ruskin, on July 1855. The couple had eight children. Their four sons’ names were Everett, George, Geoffroy, John.
The latter chose the career of the naturalist combining it with the wildlife artist’s activity. He also became a posthumous biographer of his notable father.
The family of Millais also had four daughters, Effie, Mary, Alice and Sophie. Alice had close relationships with the composer Edward Elgar and inspired him on his musical compositions, among which were themes in his Violin Concerto.
