An excellent instance of this is afforded in The Blind Girl, where he has given little enough attention to the grandeur of the passing storm-clouds, and has concentrated the whole of his energies upon the rendering, with supreme fidelity, of dripping weeds and a drenched hillside lighted by the rays of the setting sun. As a record of microscopic insight, the picture is superlatively successful; it could hardly be more closely reasoned out; but, as a representation of Nature in one of her most impressive moods, it is ineffectual and unconvincing. So, too, his most popular landscape, Chill October, falls short of greatness, because it is too plainly studied bit by bit, and part by part, and built up precisely by the careful putting in place of material collected for the pictorial purpose. It holds together, not because it has one great dominating intention, but because its construction is so ingenious, and its mechanism so workmanlike, that no single detail can be criticised as out of relation to the rest. It can hardly be called learned in design, nor can it be said to have any conspicuous dignity of style; yet the knowledge of form, the intimate observation of the growth of riverside vegetation, and the appreciation of autumnal colouring, which were turned to account by the artist in his treatment of the subject, make the canvas prominent among the greatest nature studies of modern times.
No consideration of his influence and no review of his performance would be complete without an appreciative reference to his services to black and white. As a painter he has a secure place among the chief modern masters of the world; but what he did for pictorial art was paralleled, if not surpassed, by his assertion of the dignity and importance of illustration as a form of occupation for even the greatest of art workers.
It has been well said that if Millais had never devoted himself to the painting of oil pictures, but had given his life entirely to the work of book illustration, his position would still have been indisputable, and his magnificent ability would have been amply demonstrated. There is, indeed, a great deal of truth in this contention. Although the world would have been the poorer for the loss of his masterly essays in brushwork, and of his wonderful exercises in the arrangement of strong colour, it would have possessed extremely significant evidence of the reality of his artistic judgment, and of the adaptability of his inventive powers. In his black and white work he showed frequently a side of his capacity that appeared in his painting only on great occasions, a sense of dramatic exigencies, a feeling for illustrative meanings, far beyond what was suggested by the general run of his pictures. As an interpreter of the fancies of other men he was exceptionally intelligent, with a memorable grasp of the salient points of the story and a remarkable facility in summarising essentials. He was afraid of nothing in the way of a subject, and spared no labour to make his drawings completely expressive.
His love of black and white was indeed a genuine one. Illustration was not to him, as it so often is with other men, a mere expedient, resorted to because an unappreciative public refused to recognise the merit and importance of his paintings, and abandoned gladly as soon as he found he could make a sufficient income without it. On the contrary, he welcomed the opportunities with which this branch of art practice provided him, and regarded them as of the highest value. For more than twenty years he was a prolific illustrator, constantly busy with drawings that were reproduced in all kinds of books and magazines; and even in his later life occasional examples appeared to prove that his hand had not lost its cunning and that his interest in this type of work was undiminished.
How deeply he felt about this particular subject is, perhaps, best proved by his constant advocacy, within and without the Academy, of the claims of illustrative draughtsmen to official recognition. Before the Royal Commission on the Academy he strenuously urged that workers in black and white should be declared eligible for election to membership of that institution as draughtsmen purely, instead of being required to disguise themselves as picture painters before they could hope for admission; and his pleading then expressed a conviction which remained strong in him till his death. He spoke with real authority on a matter that, both by inclination and association, he was fully qualified to discuss. His experience of illustrative drawing, and his acquaintance with the history of its development, were both peculiarly intimate; and he knew exactly what were the possibilities of influence possessed by the craft.
About his technical methods there is comparatively little to be said. He was not a worker who concerned himself very deeply over devices of execution, or cared to codify his system of painting in accordance with scientific principles. He drew well, and handled his materials with the sureness and confidence that came from complete knowledge of what he wanted to do. His chief desire, as has been already stated, was to retain in pictures that had really cost him deep thought and prolonged labour an aspect of spontaneity and freshness; to be direct in statement and simple in expression. He had a well-founded belief that the finest art was that in which the meaning of the artist was to be realised with the least amount of seeking and with as little inquiry as possible about his intentions. Consequently, he strove all his life to master the intricacies of his craft, so that no hesitation on his part might make his meaning vague or indefinite.
Speed he always had. Even in the apparently laborious period of his Pre-Raphaelite performance he could, and did, paint with amazing facility—the head of Ferdinand in Ferdinand lured by Ariel, was, for instance, completed in five hours—and as years went on his certainty became even more indisputable. Cherry Ripe was painted in a week, The Last Rose of Summer in not more than four days, and for many of his portraits half a dozen sittings sufficed to give him all that was necessary for the achievement of a masterpiece. His quickness of apprehension and accuracy of vision helped him to a prompt decision as to choice of material; and when his direction was once fixed, his inexhaustible energy carried him easily through the work of production. Nature had well equipped him for his profession, and wisely he followed the lines she had laid down.
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
The works which have been reproduced as illustrations to this summary of the career of one of the greatest artists whom the British school has known have been selected with the intention of representing the more important stages in his progress. It is comparatively easy to divide his life into different periods, each one of which was marked by some achievements of more than ordinary significance. Thus the Christ in the House of His Parents (1849), and Ophelia (1852) belong to the time when he was a devout believer in the creed of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Autumn Leaves (1856) and The Vale of Rest (1858) show the first beginnings of the change of conviction which led him a few years later to an almost complete abandonment of his earlier principles; A Souvenir of Velasquez (1868) marks the end of the transition from his youthful methods to the vigorous freedom of his middle life; The North-West Passage (1874) and A Yeoman of the Guard (1876), the triumphant attainment of absolute mastery over all the details of his craft, and the Thomas Carlyle (1877), the commencement of that period of sober confidence in his perfected skill which continued till his death in 1896.