“They both help me, I can tell you,” said Millais, as he stood with one hand on his father’s shoulder, and the other on Mrs. Millais’ chair. “He’s really capital, and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the old doctors from him. By making a little alteration in each, and putting on different kinds of beards; he does splendidly. Couldn’t be better, could he? And he sits for hands and draperies too. And as for mamma, she reads to me and finds me subjects. She gets me all I want in the way of dresses and makes them up for me, and searches out difficult questions for me at the British Museum—in the library, you know. She’s very clever, I can tell you.” He stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the “old daddy,” as he called him, on the back. The father was then only about forty-seven.…[3]
Many and eager were the discussions that took place among the students. Hunt’s first visit to the National Gallery, while he was still at the office, had not been altogether a success. The Age of Brown was flourishing. “Bacchus and Ariadne” was brown then. In fact when, some few years later, it was cleaned, and the original colours appeared, many people said they preferred it brown. Lost in the brown air, and quite unable to derive any pleasure from “Venus attired by the Graces,” the new-comer, standing in front of Titian’s masterpiece, inquired where were “the really grand paintings of the great master’s?”
“That picture before you, sir, of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ is one of the finest specimens existing of the greatest colourist in the world.” Here the custodian stopped to understand my paralysed expression. “Can’t you see its beauty, sir?” “Not much, I must confess,” I slowly stammered; “it is as brown as my grandmother’s painted tea-tray.” He stared hopelessly and then left me, only adding as a parting shot, “In the other rooms there are some wonderful Rubens, a consummate Guido, and miraculous heads by Vandyke, and several supremely fine Rembrandts; they will at least equal your grandmother’s tea-tray; perhaps you’ll be able to see some beauty in them.”[4]
It took wonderful courage in those days to go on thinking that grass and trees were green, when all the eminent teachers maintained that so far as Art was concerned, they were brown, and that if you only painted them brown for several years “an eye for Nature” would come. They were green, however, at Ewell in Surrey, whither the young artist went one autumn. While he was there, his first picture, “Woodstock,” was sold for £20. Furthermore, a fellow-student borrowed from Cardinal Wiseman vol. i. of “Modern Painters,” and lent it to him for twenty-four hours. He sat up most of the night to read it.
He had fished out a copy of Keats from a box marked “This lot 4d.,” and determined to paint a scene from “The Eve of St. Agnes.” “It’s like a parson,” said Millais, laughing—a curious commentary on the reading of “Isabella”; but he soon came round. Millais had begun to assert his independence of judgment, to the no small wrath of his mother.
“Johnnie is behaving abominably,” she said. “I want you, Hunt, to hear; you would not believe it; he shuts us out of the studio altogether; he is there now all alone. For twelve days now neither his father nor I have been allowed to enter the room. I appeal to you; is that the way to treat parents? He cannot expect to prosper, can he, now? I hope you will tell him so.”
At this point a voice was heard from the studio. “Is not that Hunt? Don’t mind what they say. Come here.”[5]
Some time afterwards, a wonderful conversation on the relative merits of the Old Masters was interrupted by a quiet knock at the door.
“Who’s there?” asked my companion.
“I have brought you the tea myself,” said the mother.