Millais

MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR EDITED BY . . T. LEMAN HARE
MILLAIS
1829—1896
“Masterpieces in Colour” Series
Others in Preparation.
PLATE I.—THE ORDER OF RELEASE. Frontispiece
(Tate Gallery)
This is one of the pictures which Millais always reckoned among the greatest of all his successes, and that it has many notable qualities which justify his preference can certainly not be denied. It is wonderful in its earnest and thoughtful realism, and it explains its motive with a completeness that is most convincing. The expression on the face of the woman who brings the order which frees her husband from prison is singularly happy in its combination of tenderness for the wounded Highlander, and triumph over the hesitating gaoler; and there are many other little touches, like the joyous effusiveness of the dog, and the unconsciousness of the sleeping child, which amplify and perfect the pictorial story.
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.


As a record of some half century of brilliant activity, and of practically unbroken success, the life-story of John Everett Millais is in many respects unlike those which can be told about the majority of artists who have played great parts in the modern art world. He had none of the hard struggle for recognition, or of the fight against adverse circumstances, which have too often embittered the earlier years of men destined to take eventually the highest rank in their profession. Things went well with him from the first; he gained attention at an age when most painters have barely begun to make a bid for popularity, and his position was assured almost before he had arrived at man’s estate. He owed some of his success, no doubt, to his attractive and vigorous personality, but it was due in far greater measure to the extraordinary powers which he manifested from the very outset of his career.