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.
