4S6 



MILLAIS, SIR JOHN EVERETT. 



which they can not vote. The name of Charles C. 

 Willett was substituted. Charles K. Perrine was 

 later the candidate for Attorney-General. 



The first Republican convention met in Detroit, 

 May 7. There was a contest over the question of 

 the currency plank in the platform, which was 

 compromised by an agreement to adopt the expres- 

 sion on the subject of the Minneapolis convention 

 of 1892. The other resolutions were in favor of 

 protective duties and reciprocity, and of the nomi- 

 nation of William McKinley ; and the delegates 

 were instructed to support him. 



The second State Republican convention of the 

 year was held at Grand Rapids, Aug. 5. The reso- 

 lutions approved the national platform and ticket. 

 The nominations were: For Governor, Ilazen S. 

 Pingree ; Lieutenant Governor, Thomas B. Dun- 

 stan ; Secretary of State, Washington Gardner ; 

 Treasurer, George A. Steel ; Auditor General, Ros- 

 coe D. Dix; Attorney-General, Fred. A. Maynard ; 

 Commissioner State Land Office, William A. French ; 

 Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jason E. 

 Hammond; Member of State Board of Education, 

 James W. Simmons. 



In October the Supreme Court granted a manda- 

 mus against the Board of Election Commissioners 

 of Wayne County, compelling the board to give the 

 Prohibitionists second place on the ballot, which 

 was claimed for the fusion ticket. The opinion 

 said that that ticket could not be treated as the 

 ticket of the organization known as the Democratic 

 party two years ago, and said further: ''The ticket 

 results from a combination with two other political 

 parties. The evident purpose was to unite the 

 forces of these organizations for the present cam- 

 paign, and the result was the formation of a new 

 party for the time being, under a new name." 



The canvass of the returns of the November 

 election gave McKinley 293,582, Bryan 236,714, 

 Palmer 6,879, Levering 5,025, Bentley 1.995. and 

 Matchett 297. The State officers elected were all 

 Republicans. Following is the vote for Governor : 

 Pingree, Republican, 304,431; Sligh, Democrat- 

 Populist, 221,022; Safford, Prohibitionist. 5.499; 

 Sprague, National Democrat, 9,738 ; Giberson, Na- 

 tional Prohibitionist, 1,944. The votes for the other 

 Republican candidates ranged from 292,785 to 294,- 

 525. Ten of the 12 representatives in Congress 

 will be Republicans, and on joint ballot the Legis- 

 lature will stand 108 Republicans to 24 Democrat- 

 Populists. 



MILLAIS, Sir JOHN EVERETT, P. R, A., Eng- 

 lish painter, born in Southampton, June 8, 1829: died 

 in London, Aug. 13, 1896. He was the most con- 

 spicuous figure in the English art of his day, and, 

 judged by popular standards, the most successful 

 of English painters of the century, with the possible 

 exception of Landseer. His career was rendered 

 remarkable not only by the facility and evenness of 

 his work, his sympathy with popular sentiments, 

 and his early and almost uninterrupted popular 

 success, but also from a historical point of view by 

 his youthful association with the pre-Raphaelite 

 Brotherhood and the. eulogies of Mr. Ruskin. For 

 over forty years his pictures were centers of at- 

 traction at the London exhibitions, and few paint- 

 ers of any time have known so brilliant a career. 



John Everett Millais came of an old Jersey fam- 

 ily, and his parents were residing only temporarily 

 in Portland Place, Southampton, when he was 

 born. In 1835 his family went to live in Dinant, 

 Brittany, where his precocious talent for drawing 

 showed itself as vividly as the infantile genius of 

 Mozart. Recognizing this strong predilection, his 

 parents took him to London and submitted him to 

 the judgment of Sir Martin Archer Shee, P. R. A., 

 whose first offhand advice, ''Rather make him a 



chimney-sweep than an artist," was changed to en- 

 thusiastic admiration by an inspection of young 

 Millais's drawings. The boy was therefore entered 

 in the best art school of that day Mr. Sass's acad- 

 emy, in Bloomsbury where in 1838 he won the sil- 

 ver medal of the Society of Arts with a drawing 

 from the antique. In 1840 he became a student at 

 the Royal Academy, winning the silver medal in 



SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS. 



1843 and, indeed, every prize for which he com- 

 peted in his six years at the academy. In 1846, 

 when in his seventeenth year, he exhibited his first 

 painting in the Royal Academy, " Pizarro seizing 

 the Inca of Peru." The judgment of a French 

 critic that this was one of the two best historical 

 works of the year received a confirmation the next 

 year when the British Institution's gold medal was 

 awarded to Millais's "Tribe of Benjamin seizing 

 the Daughters of Shiloh." In 1847 also he sent a 

 large cartoon, " The Widow's Mite," to the West- 

 minster competition. 



In spite of these early successes, Millais knew 

 something of the time of struggle and neglect 

 which so few artists escape, and there are tales of 

 drawings made for a few shillings and portraits 

 painted for two or three pounds. This was the 

 prelude to the formation of the pre-Raphaelite 

 Brotherhood by D. G. Rossetti, Holman Hunt, 

 Woolner, Millais, and three others a brotherhood 

 of which Ruskin, its foremost champion, said that 

 the principles were neither Pre- nor Post-Raphaelite, 

 but everlasting. There is a familiar story that Lasi- 

 nio's engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo 

 at Pisa inspired these young artists to a movement 

 toward freedom from academic trammels and a direct 

 and sincere delineation of all the facts and details of 

 Nature as they actually exist. The literal imita- 

 tion of Nature was the watchword of this group, 

 whose unquestioned sincerity has furnished one of 

 the memorable episodes of the century's art history. 

 But the name was erroneous, since imitation of 

 other paintings and mannerisms existed before 

 the Renaissance in Italy and before Raphael, as 

 Leonardo observed in the case of the school of 

 Giotto. Their principle was an impossible shib- 

 boleth which enthroned analysis and left syn- 

 thesis no place, to go no further into its misconcep- 

 tions. Their prophet, while one of the most elo- 

 quent of writers upon art, was for young men one 

 of the most dangerous and misleading. On the 

 other hand, the earnestness and sincerity of the 

 movement were ennobling and stimulating, and the 

 arduous and exact training of hand and eye which 

 was involved was not without its advantages. The 

 first important picture painted by Millais under the 

 influence of the new cult was his "Lorenzo and Isa- 



