MILLAIS, Sir John Everett, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

MILLAIS, Sir John Everett

Featured Paintings in Detail

(2)

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettIsabella 1849 Oil on canvas, 103 x 142,8 cm

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettIsabella (detail)1849 Oil on canvas, 103 x 142,8 cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettA Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford 1857 Oil on canvas, 125.5 x 171.5cmLady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettA Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford (detail)1857 Oil on canvas, 125.5 x 171.5cmLady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettThe Knight Errant 1870Oil on canvas, 184 x 135 cm Tate Gallery, London

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettThe Knight Errant (detail)1870Oil on canvas, 184 x 135 cm Tate Gallery, London

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettChrist in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’) 1849–50 Oil on canvas, 86,4 x 139,7 cm Tate Gallery, London

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettChrist in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’) (detail)1849–50 Oil on canvas, 86,4 x 139,7 cm Tate Gallery, London

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettFerdinand Lured By Ariel1849-1850 Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 50.8 cm Private Collection

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettFerdinand Lured By Ariel (detail)1849-1850 Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 50.8 cm Private Collection

MILLAIS, Sir John Everett , Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

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MILLAIS, Sir John EverettFerdinand Lured By Ariel

Ferdinand Lured by Ariel is a painting by John Everett Millais which depicts an episode from Act I, Scene II of Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

It illustrates Ferdinand's lines "Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?". He is listening to Ariel singing the lyric "Full fathom five thy father lies". Ariel is tipping Ferdinand's hat from his head, while Ferdinand holds on to its string and strains to hear the song. Ferdinand looks straight at Ariel, but the latter is invisible to him.

The painting was Millais' first attempt at the plein air Pre-Raphaelite style, which he did at Shotover Park near Oxford. The supernatural green bats were the last additions to the composition. Their grotesque poses put off the patron who had originally undertaken to buy it, since they were a radical

departure from the standard sylph-like fairy figures of the day. They adopt the poses of "see, hear, speak no evil."

The invisibility of Ariel and the bats is suggested by their semi-merger with the green background. The connection with natural camouflage is implied by the presence of the green

lizards hiding in front of the clump in the right foreground.

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettIsabella

Isabella was one of the first paintings made in the new Pre-Raphaelite style. It was begun shortly after the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, when Millais was only 19.

The harshly brilliant colour combined with sharp detail, deliberately unbalanced composition and self-consciously angularity and flatness were all controversial features of Pre-Raphaelitism. The movement was loosely inspired by painting methods from early Italian painting, from the time before Raphael.

The subject was taken from a poem by John Keats, itself based on a story by the 14th century Italian writer Boccaccio. It tells of the love between Isabella, the sister of wealthy Florentine merchants, and their poor, low-born apprentice Lorenzo.

The jealous brothers murder Lorenzo, but his body is found by Isabella. She cut off the head and buried it in a pot of basil which she watered with her tears.

The ending is hinted at in this painting by the pot of herbs in the background. There are also many other signs of the coming violence and tragedy. One of the brothers is angrily cracking nuts. He also aims a kick at Isabella's dog, whilst his own sleeps beneath his chair. Dogs are often used as symbols of loyalty and fidelity in paintings. The lovers are sharing a blood orange, signifying the later spilling of Lorenzo's blood.

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettThe Knight Errant

The Knight Errant is a large painting in which the figures are almost life size. The moonlit scene apparently depicts an act of medieval chivalry in which one such Knight errant, clad in armour, is on the point of freeing a woman who has been stripped and

tied to a tree. The tree, a Silver Birch, was commonly identified with the female gender in the nineteenth century and was sometimes referred to as 'Lady Birch'.

Birch twigs were also traditionally used in flagellation. The woman's clothes lie on the ground to the left and her molesters, assumed to be robbers by one critic, are seen fleeing the scene in the top right corner of the canvas. There is blood on the Knight's sword and the torso of a dead man is visible behind him.

The Knight Errant was Millais's first and only attempt at painting the female nude and critical reviews of the painting focussed on his treatment of the unclothed woman. Recent x-ray photographs of the picture reveal that her head and torso were originally turned towards the Knight, establishing eye contact. Many poor reviews, coupled with the

fact that the painting did not sell, compelled Millais to cut out the head and chest of the female figure from his canvas and re-work these parts to show the woman turning modestly away.

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettA Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford

This painting is a fine example of the Pre-Raphaelites’ interest in subjects about medieval chivalry. It shows an ancient knight in golden armour carrying the children of a poor woodcutter across a river. Sir Isumbras is a character from a 14th century English romance, but this incident does not occur in the poem. It may have been invented by

Millais’s friend the art critic Tom Taylor, who wrote a fake medieval verse explaining the story.

Many critics thought the horse was too big and it was repainted several times, but the landscape background was much admired. Its loose and fluid handling, which contrasts with the artist’s earlier more detailed landscape style, captures the fleeting effect of twilight. This perhaps suggests a deeper and more spiritual meaning about the

end of the knight’s quest and the transience of worldly deeds.

MILLAIS, Sir John EverettChrist in the House of His Parents (‘The Carpenter’s Shop’)

This is Millais's first important religious subject, showing a scene from the boyhood of Christ. When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850 it was given no title, but accompanied by a biblical quotation: 'And one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.' (Zech.

13:6)

Christian symbolism figures prominently in the picture. The carpenter's triangle on the wall, above Christ's head, symbolises the Holy Trinity. The wood and nails prefigure the crucifixion, as does the blood on the young Christ's hand, which he has cut on a nail, and which drips onto his foot. The young St John is shown fetching a bowl of water with which to bathe the wound. This clearly identifies him as the Baptist, and the image is extended by the white dove perched on the ladder, symbol of the Holy Spirit, which descended from Heaven

at the baptism of Christ.

The public reaction to the picture was one of horror and Millais was viciously attacked by the press. The Times described the painting as 'revolting' and objected to the way in which the artist had dared to depict the Holy Family as ordinary, lowly people in a humble carpenter's shop 'with no conceivable omission of misery, of dirt, of even disease, all finished with the

same loathsome minuteness'. Charles Dickens was one of the most vehement critics, describing the young Christ as 'a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed gown' .

MILLAIS, Sir John Everett

Sir John Everett Millais was an English painter and precocious artist. Learning to draw at age 4, his parents providing him with private art lessons with a Mr. Bessel. Encouraged by Bessel, the family visited London with an introduction to the President of the Royal Academy and in 1840, at age eleven, John Millais became the youngest

student ever at the Academy. In 1846, he exhibited his Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru at the RA.

Along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt he was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was markedly influenced by them and by John Ruskin. His first Pre-Raphaelite picture Lorenzo and Isabella,

the banquet scene from the poem Isabella, or The Pot of Basil about ill-fated love by English poet Keats, figures in the Academy in 1849, where it was followed in 1850 by Christ in the House of His Parents, Ferdinand Lured by

Ariel which met the full force of the anti-Pre-Raphaelite reaction.

In 1855, he married Euphemia (Effie) Charmers Ruskin, the divorcée of John Ruskin, who bore him 8 children; they appeared later on many of his pictures. Ruskin continued to praise the artist. Preoccupied with his social

standing, Millais later abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style, broke with John Ruskin, and began to cater to popular tastes. The exquisite Gambler’s Wife and The Boyhood of Raleigh mark the transition of his art into its final phase, displaying brilliant and effective coloring and his effortless power of brushwork. The interest and value of his later

works, largely portraits, lies mainly in their splendid technical qualities. In 1885, at age 56, Millais was made a baronet, and eleven years later became president of the Royal Academy and

was decorated with many foreign orders and awards. He died the same year, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

MILLAIS, Sir John Everett, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

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