MILLAIS. Sill JOHN KVKUKTT. 



487 



" exhibited in L84 aining portraits of tained that the possibilities and promise of 



-~ early years ever readied their highest development. 

 One point should be emphasized in entering upon 

 the second period of Millais's art that Nature never 

 equipped him for the career of a great imaginative 

 artist. While his enormous facility and the stimu- 

 lus of his companions enabled him to hold his own 

 and more for a time in the symbolic painting of 

 the pre-Raphaelites. it may be questioned wb 



Mrs. Hodgkinson, the Kossettis. William Bell Scott, 

 and others of the pre-llaphaelilc circle. The ridi- 

 cule bestowed upon the primitive treatment and 

 naive detail of this picture was doubled the next 

 year when he showed the "C'hrist in the House of 

 his Parents," which the "Times" denounced as an 

 example of "a morbid infatuation which sacrifices 

 truth, beauty, and feeling to mere eccentricity 



Onlv a few comprehended the attitude of the his heart was fully in his work, for by nature he 

 brotherhood or attempted to understand their re- was a painter of the present oftheacluelle. From 

 : holism, yet a movement for the union of 1860 to 1871 came an almost unbroken suc< 



. ... i : :*u Q f historic-^ biblical, and poetical subjects. : . 



and portraits. After 1871 he painted few historical 

 and romantic subjects, and devoted himself, with 

 the exception of some landscape work, to portraits 



art. truth, and morality was quite in keeping with 

 that time of moral exercitation over the Oxford 

 movement and the later Gothic revival, a time 

 when Ruskin. writing as an art critic, proclaimed 

 his fear lest some of the brother- 

 hood should be " touched by 

 Tract arian heresies." 



Although it is obvious that in- 

 dividualities like those of Millais,, 

 Hunt, and Rossetti could not re- 

 main long so closely united, it 

 was not until 1858 that Millais 

 may be said to have adopted a 

 more elastic and eclectic art in 

 his Black Brunswicker." Be- 

 fore this, however, he had painted 

 pictures of enduring popularity, 

 notably "A Huguenot" (1*51). 

 while his "Mariana," 'Autumn 

 Leaves." " Order of U.-lease." and 

 particularly his " Ophelia." have 

 held their own as distinguished 

 examples of his art. But by 1857 

 Ruskin. whose praise had been 

 unbounded, was beginning his 

 equally strenuous lamentations 

 over Millais's fall. This period 

 can not be dismissed without an 

 acknowledgment that in devel- 

 oping some of these earlier ideas 

 Millais showed himself truer to 

 high artistic ideals than amid the 

 later brilliant successes of his life. 

 This early influence was shown 

 not only in the " Autumn 1 . 

 of 1856, but also in " The Vale of 

 Rest ' of 1859 and the " Eve of 

 St. Agnes" of 1862. It has been 

 said, and disputed, that in these 

 pictures Millais reached his high- 

 est artistic expression. From 

 l x iii onward, while his career 

 offers an unbroken series of suc- 

 -. there is too much which 

 shows a change from the ear- 

 nestness and high endeavor of 

 those earlier years to a greater 

 or less content with an external effectiveness 

 sometimes realized by loose and perfunctory means. 

 The popular opinion of Millais. as of m 

 ful artists, has been that his career represented 

 a steady growth and a culmination of triumphs. 

 and this opinion has found expression again and 

 nirain in the criticisms or rather eulogies of Eng- 

 lish writers who hailed almost every new picture 

 as the impeccable work of a great master and 



RESIDENCE OF SIR JOHN MILLAIS, PALACE GATE. LONDON. 



and genres. His success was constant, his rewards 

 were great. From the long list of pictures painted 

 between 1860 and 1871 we may single out "The 

 Boyhood of Raleigh" and "The Widow's Mite" 

 as examples of sympathetic expression, and from 

 his later worin "Effie Deans" and "The Princes in 

 the Tower" as illustrations of his effective story- 

 telling. In 1872 he broke new ground with his 

 Chill October." still regarded by many as the 



unhesitatingly placed his name beside those of finest of his landscapes.^ which was followed bv 



Gainsborough and Reynolds. It is true that the 

 technical facility and assured self-command shown 

 in work like the "Isabella." which recalled the lov- 

 insrcare of Van Eyck. in the " Autumn Leaves." and 

 in his trilogy of love scenes " The Huguenot." 

 'The Proscribed Royalist." and "The Order of Re- 

 lease " indicated a talent broad as well as fine : but 

 in reviewing his career it can not be safely main- 



" Flowing to the Sea." " The Fringe of the M 

 and many others. His abundant sympathy with 

 children showed itself at - of his career. 



ially after 1870. when, a-' subjects, they 1 

 to assume a more real and important character. 

 In some of these studies it may be said that In- 

 showed a certain indebtedness to Rc-ynolds. but 

 this did him no discredit. Like some of the pic- 



