Sir John Everett Millais
Date: 2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Millais; John Everett; 1829-1896

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Title: Sir John Everett Millais

Author: A. L. Baldry

Release date: October 25, 2022 [eBook #69227]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: George Bell & Sons, 1902

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69227

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS ***

A YEOMAN OF THE GUARD.

Bell's Miniature Series of Painters

SIR JOHN EVERETT
MILLAIS

BY A. L. BALDRY

LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1908

First Published, December, 1902.
Reprinted, December, 1907.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Life of the Artist
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Later Developments
Last Years

The Art of Millais

Our Illustrations

The Chief Works of Millais in Public Galleries, etc.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Yeoman of the Guard ... Frontispiece

Christ in the House of His Parents

A Souvenir of Velazquez

The Vale of Rest

Ophelia

Autumn Leaves

The North-West Passage

Thomas Carlyle

SIR JOHN MILLAIS

HIS LIFE

Although John Everett Millais was born, on June 8, 1829, at Portland Place, Southampton, 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 he 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 convincing proofs of the remarkable artistic capacity that was in him. These early efforts were so surprising, and attracted so much attention outside 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 profession for which he seemed predestined. The President of the Royal Academy, Sir Martin 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 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 undertaking 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 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 association, that, despite the small number of its members, 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 belonged 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 Brotherhood. 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 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.

CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS.

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 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, however, 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 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 opposition 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 uneasy 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. 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 confusion 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 remained for many years on his hands; but Ferdinand 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.

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 pilloried 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 majority 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 Academy elected him an Associate. This election, was, however, quashed, because he was discovered to be under the age at which admission was possible, and it was not till 1853 that 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 recollections of his earlier style and an obvious desire to find new ways of expressing himself. 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 seeking 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 influence of his Pre-Raphaelite conviction, and chose instead the riotous freedom of touch, and the happy readiness of suggestion that make his 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 treatment; 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.

A SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ.

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 accomplishment, 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, and began that array of important studies of the open air which reveal most instructively his limitless patience and searching power of observation.

As a portrait painter also he developed superlative gifts, adding year by year to a collection of masterpieces unequalled by any of his contemporaries. 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 rendering of these various types he missed nothing of the individuality and distinctive character with which each one was endowed. Here especially 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 absolutely complete.

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 (1885), J. 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! (1895), punctuated the progress of his intellectual and imaginative 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 convention 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 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 1881, a Foreign Associate of the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1882, and President of the Royal 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 Mérite," 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 instructive 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 20th, 1896, and died on 13th 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 connection 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 examination—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 he had reached the position that must have seemed to him, after his long and intimate connection 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 exquisitely 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. The throat trouble, that had been growing month by month more acute and distressing, was pronounced 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 20th, 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 wholesomeness, 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 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 inexhaustible 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 preliminary thought needed to carry to success a great undertaking. Indeed, the one thing that he always preached was application, constant industry devoted to the task of finding out how work should be done. Carelessness he condemned; but he had no love for that type of performance which shows the trouble that the producer has taken over it. He 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 suitable 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. "Individuality 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 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 sentimental 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 anything 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 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 contrivance. 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 directness 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 expression 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, A Waif, Caller Herrin', 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 commanded 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 descended 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.

THE VALE OF REST.

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 invention. There are quite half a dozen of his canvases which by their wonderful vitality, their 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 Passion, 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 dramatic side of pictorial art. No false note spoils the harmony of these compositions, no touch of uncertainty or divided opinion; they are confident 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 complicated by excess of details, and was strict in its adherence to the main facts of the story, without irrelevant matter introduced to complete picturesquely an imperfect conception. The Knight 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 characteristic 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 reproduction 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 considerable 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 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 Proscribed 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!; 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 wholesome, 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 understanding 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 discriminating 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 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, restrained 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 representation 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 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 incompleteness, because his patience had failed him 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 perfection 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 exhaustively with the problems presented by natural 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 incentive 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 comprehensive 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.

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 hillside 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 representation 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 construction 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 observation of the growth of riverside vegetation, and the appreciation of autumnal colouring, which 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 indisputable, 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 inventive 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 suggested 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 unappreciative 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 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 subject 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 pleading then expressed a conviction which remained strong in him till his death. He spoke with real authority on a matter that, both by inclination and association, he was fully qualified to discuss. His experience of illustrative drawing, and his acquaintance with the history of its development, were both peculiarly intimate; and he knew exactly what were the possibilities of influence possessed by the craft.

About his technical methods there is comparatively 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 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 statement 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 realised 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 indefinite.

Speed he always had. Even in the apparently laborious period of his Pre-Raphaelite performance 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 him all that was necessary for the achievement of a masterpiece. His quickness of apprehension and accuracy of vision helped him to a prompt decision as to choice of material; and when his direction was once fixed, his inexhaustible 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 abandonment of his earlier principles; A Souvenir of Velasquez (1868) marks the end of the transition from his youthful methods to the vigorous freedom of his middle life; The North-West Passage (1874) and A Yeoman of the Guard (1876), the triumphant attainment of absolute mastery over all the details of his craft, and the Thomas Carlyle (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 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 governing 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 traditions 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 Eastlake'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.

Millais did not hesitate to put on one side all the namby-pamby prettiness and elegant affectation which governed the production of his contemporaries, 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 carpenter'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, 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 accomplishment. 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 imaginative 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 example 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 daylight. Only an observer endowed with extraordinary 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 relaxation of his strenuous effort after completeness; nothing is slurred over, and nothing which could add to the persuasiveness of the work is omitted.

OPHELIA.

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 sentiment which suits to perfection a subject full of sympathetic suggestion. Not a trace of affectation 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 insufficiency of technical knowledge. The imitative painter is satisfied if he can deceive the eye by tricks of handling, cunningly managed, 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 responsibility, 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 painting 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 understood 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 monumental 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.

AUTUMN LEAVES.

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 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-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 declaration 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 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 monumental 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 intended 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 morbidity. 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 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 precision 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 rather than microscopically analysed and elaborately 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 treatment of the picture were suggested by the practice of the great Spanish master, but this 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.

THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.

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 contributions 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 composition. 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 suited in every way to his robust and energetic personality. The idea of indomitable perseverance in the face of apparently overwhelming dangers, of tenacious effort to triumphantly accomplish a great intention, was quite in accordance 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 combination of strenuousness and simple directness, 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 embroidery 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 subject 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 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 productions of none but the unquestionable masters of pictorial art.

THOMAS CARLYLE

THOMAS CARLYLE.

The Portrait of Thomas Carlyle has qualities scarcely less commanding, though it did not offer such opportunities for the display of masterly 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 presentation of a modern man. But even without any spectacular additions this picture is a remarkable one, because it reveals so plainly the discernment of character which had much to do with the success that Millais gained in portraiture. 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, dogmatic, fierce perhaps, and certainly intolerant, but it is keenly intellectual and shrewdly reflective. There is courage and firmness of conviction in every line, and the instinct of the tenacious 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 without 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 Millais 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 indisputably been perfectly consistent in his statement 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. 8 in. (1494.)

Portrait of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 1879. 4 ft. 1 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. 5 ft. 9 in. by 7 ft. 4 in. (1509.) Tate Gift.

Mercy—St. Bartholomew's Day—1572. 1886. 6 ft. 1 in. by 4 ft. 4 in. (1510.) Tate Gift.

Saint Stephen. 1895. 5 ft. by 3 ft. 9 in. (1563.) Tate Gift.

A Disciple. 1895. 4 ft. 1 in. by 2 ft. 11 in. (1564.) Tate Gift.

Speak! Speak! 1895. 5 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. 11 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 4½ in. (1807.) Bequeathed by Mr. Henry Vaughan.

Charles I. and his Son in the Studio of Van Dyck. 6¼ in. by 4½ in. (1808.) Bequeathed 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.

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 portrait. 3 ft. 9 in. by 2 ft. 10 in.

William Wilkie Collins, the novelist. 11 in. by 7 in.

John Leech, caricaturist. In water-colours. 11 in. by 9 in.

BIRMINGHAM ART GALLERY.

The Widow's Mite. 1869. 3 ft. 10 in. by 2 ft. 7 in. (171.)

The Blind Girl. 1856. Pre-Raphaelite work. 2 ft. 8 in. by 1 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.

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.          } A series of panels for lunettes
Manhood.    } formerly in the Judges' Lodgings in
Age.             } Leeds. Painted in 1847.
Music.         }
Art.             }

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. 1 ft. 10 in. by 2 ft. 4 in. Presented by Mr. George Holt in 1895. (525.)

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. 6 ft. 4 in. by 4 ft. 6 in. (171.) Bought from the Executors 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 Lorne, 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.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY, BURLINGTON HOUSE DIPLOMA GALLERY.

A Souvenir of Velazquez. 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.

CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

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Table of Contents

- SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS
- HIS LIFE
- HIS ART
- OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

- THE CHIEF WORKS OF MILLAIS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES, ETC.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE