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.