Sir John Everett Millais

by A. L. Baldry

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.