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.
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.
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.