Who Was John Everett Millais?

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was an English painter and illustrator, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), and one of the most successful Victorian painters of the nineteenth century. Born in Southampton on June 8, 1829, the son of John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais, John Everett Millais showed precocious artistic talent and became the youngest student ever admitted to the Royal Academy schools at age eleven (in 1840). He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, along with painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, the sculptor Thomas Woolner, and the art critic William Michael Rossetti. Millais was created a baronet (Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet) in 1885 and was elected President of the Royal Academy of Arts in February 1896, only months before his death in August of that year.

Sir John Everett Millais, painted by Charles Robert Leslie. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This guide covers who John Everett Millais was, his prodigious early career, his role in founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, his most famous paintings, his relationship with John Ruskin and Effie Gray, his later career and shift in style, and his cultural legacy.

Who was John Everett Millais?

Sir John Everett Millais was an English painter and illustrator born in Southampton on June 8, 1829, and died in London on August 13, 1896. Of the three founding Pre-Raphaelite painters (the other two were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt), he had the surest technique, and he ended up among the most commercially successful British artists of the Victorian period.

He was a prodigy. At nine he won a Society of Arts medal, and at eleven the Royal Academy schools took him in, younger than any student they had admitted up to that time. That head start carried him fast through the academic art establishment he would later challenge and, in the end, lead.

The challenge came in 1848, when he was nineteen. With Rossetti and Hunt he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which set out to reform British painting by turning its back on Royal Academy conventions and going back to the principles of art before Raphael. Some of the most famous early Pre-Raphaelite paintings are his.

Later he went another way. From the late 1850s his brush loosened into something freer and more painterly, and his subjects broadened toward what sold. Genre paintings and portraits took over, and so did sentimental subjects. Purist Pre-Raphaelite supporters found that hard to accept. The public didn't, and he did enormously well from it.

Honors followed in a steady line. The Royal Academy made him a full member in 1863. In 1885 Queen Victoria created him a baronet (Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet), and he was one of very few artists ever given a hereditary title. He became President of the Royal Academy of Arts in February 1896 and held the post until his death that August. In less than fifty years he'd gone from outsider rebel, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelites, to the insider leading the Royal Academy (for us, that arc is the most interesting thing about him).

What was Millais's early life?

John Everett Millais was born on June 8, 1829, in Southampton, England, the son of John William Millais and Emily Mary Millais. The family itself came from Jersey (one of the Channel Islands) and had French Norman heritage, which is why you'll hear the name said "Millay" in the French manner. The English pronunciation "Millais" is widely used as well.

His talent showed in very early childhood. By seven he was producing accomplished drawings, and by nine he had a Society of Arts medal for drawing to his name. His parents took the hint. Around 1838 they moved the family from Jersey to London, specifically to support his artistic development.

About two years later, in 1840, he was admitted to the Royal Academy schools at eleven, the youngest student ever admitted up to that time. Eight years of formal academic training followed, and the technical skill he built there set his work apart for the rest of his career.

One of his fellow students was William Holman Hunt. The two became close friends, and that friendship would turn out to be central to the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti's work reached him another way, through the broader art student community of late-1840s London.

He won several Royal Academy prizes as a student, the Academy's gold medal for history painting in 1847 among them. By nineteen he was widely recognized as one of the most promising young painters in Britain. From there the safe move was a long, successful Royal Academy career. He didn't take it. Instead he joined Rossetti and Hunt in founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and took on the very institution that had trained him.

How did Millais found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?

Millais founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, along with painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, the sculptor Thomas Woolner, and the art critic William Michael Rossetti. It came together over a series of meetings in September 1848, partly at Hunt's studio and partly at 83 Gower Street in London, the house of Millais's parents.

His part was central, and it had more to do with doing than saying. Rossetti and others explained what the Brotherhood stood for, while Millais, the most technically accomplished of the three principal painters, demonstrated it. His early canvases were among the group's most ambitious, and they showed what those principles looked like in practice.

The seven members agreed on a short set of principles. First, have genuine ideas to express. Study nature attentively, too, and sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art. The last rule was simply to produce thoroughly good pictures, the plainest of the four and, to our ears, the best. Behind all of it sat one aim, reforming British painting by going back to the principles of art before Raphael (1483-1520).

One of the first Pre-Raphaelite pictures was Millais's "Christ in the House of His Parents" (also called "The Carpenter's Shop," 1849-1850), and it went on show at the Royal Academy in 1850. It put the Holy Family in Joseph's carpentry workshop, painted with realistic detail and unidealized faces. Charles Dickens attacked it in his magazine Household Words for exactly that. The row made the Brotherhood famous across Victorian London, and infamous too.

After the 1850 controversy, help came from John Ruskin, the leading British art critic of the period. He wrote letters to The Times defending the Pre-Raphaelites and arguing that their artistic program was serious. His backing is a big part of why they are remembered as a serious artistic movement and not as a passing controversy.

As a coherent group, the formal Brotherhood lasted only a few years. By the mid-1850s the founders were pursuing independent careers, and Millais in particular was drifting from strict Pre-Raphaelite principles toward broader commercial work. An early sign of it came in 1853, when he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

What are John Everett Millais's most famous paintings?

Millais's most famous paintings include "Christ in the House of His Parents" (1849-1850), "Ophelia" (1851-1852), "The Order of Release" (1853), "Autumn Leaves" (1856), "The Boyhood of Raleigh" (1870), "Bubbles" (1886), and many others. You'll find them at Tate Britain and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, with more at the Manchester Art Gallery and in many other major museums.

First, chronologically, comes "Christ in the House of His Parents" (1849-1850, also called "The Carpenter's Shop"), one of the first Pre-Raphaelite pictures, with the young Jesus in Joseph's carpentry workshop among his family. Dickens's attack on its unidealized Holy Family is what made the Brotherhood famous. It's at Tate Britain now.

Our pick, if you only ever see one Millais, is "Ophelia" (1851-1852), his most famous painting. The drowned Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet floats in a stream among precisely painted flowers and plants. He made it in two places. The background was painted outdoors on the Hogsmill River in Surrey, the figure indoors, with Elizabeth Siddal modeling in a bathtub. Few Pre-Raphaelite works are better known. It hangs at Tate Britain.

Effie Gray sat for the wife in "The Order of Release" (1853), where a Scottish prisoner released after the 1745 Jacobite uprising is embraced by his wife and child. At the time she was John Ruskin's wife. She and Millais grew close while he painted it, and that led to one of the major Victorian scandals (more below). Tate Britain has this one too.

Over at Manchester Art Gallery is "Autumn Leaves" (1856), a later picture of four girls gathered around a pile of autumn leaves. It marks the turn. You can see his strict Pre-Raphaelite period ending in it and his more painterly mature style beginning.

By 1870 the turn was complete. "The Boyhood of Raleigh" (1870) has the young Walter Raleigh listening to a sailor's tales, the future explorer's imagination taking shape as he hears them. Few Victorian narrative paintings were reproduced more often. It's at Tate Britain.

Last comes "Bubbles" (1886), a young boy (Millais's grandson was the model) blowing soap bubbles. It became famous when the Pears soap company acquired it and used it as a soap advertisement, which made it one of the most widely reproduced Victorian paintings. This one lives at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

That still leaves plenty. "Mariana" (1850-1851) and "The Blind Girl" (1856) come from the strict early years. "The Black Brunswicker" (1860) and "The Eve of Saint Agnes" (1863) date from the 1860s, by which point the broader style was firmly established, and "Cherry Ripe" (1879) is one of his many pictures of children. Add the many portraits of leading Victorian cultural figures, Tennyson and Trollope among them, and Disraeli and Gladstone too.

For a first visit, we'd go to Tate Britain. Four of the six pictures above hang there, so one afternoon covers most of the story.

What was Millais's relationship with John Ruskin and Effie Gray?

The relationship between Millais, John Ruskin, and Effie Gray became one of the major Victorian art-world scandals. It started with letters to a newspaper and ended at a wedding: Ruskin's critical support for the Pre-Raphaelites began in 1851, and by 1855 Effie Gray had her annulment from Ruskin and was married to Millais.

Ruskin (1819-1900) was the leading British art critic of the Victorian period and a major early supporter of the group. His 1851 letters in The Times, defending them against critical attacks and arguing that their program was serious, did a great deal to establish them as a major artistic movement.

His own marriage was a different story. Ruskin had married Euphemia (Effie) Chalmers Gray in April 1848, and it was unhappy and never consummated. Historians still debate the reasons, which appear to involve Ruskin's emotional and physical incapacity for marital intimacy. By the early 1850s Effie was deeply unhappy.

In 1853 Effie modeled in London for his painting "The Order of Release." Later that year Millais went with the Ruskins on a holiday to Glenfinlas in Perthshire, Scotland, where he was painting a portrait of Ruskin. During that Scottish holiday the two fell in love.

Once the holiday was over, Effie started annulment proceedings against Ruskin on grounds of non-consummation of the marriage. The annulment was granted in July 1854, which left her free to remarry. A year later, in July 1855, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais married.

That marriage lasted. They had eight children, and Effie stayed Millais's wife and creative partner for the rest of his life. The family lived prosperously in London and at country houses in Scotland, where he painted many of his later landscape works. She was also a powerful promoter of his work (a role that's easy to overlook). Together the couple worked to secure commissions and to widen their social and intellectual circles in late Victorian London.

Ruskin and Millais kept an awkward, formal distance afterward. Ruskin carried on as a critic and reformer, writing all the while, and he never remarried (though in his later years he was emotionally involved with the young Rose La Touche). Neither man's career was damaged by the drama. It did complicate everything that passed between painter and critic from then on.

How did Millais's style change after the Pre-Raphaelite years?

Millais's style changed significantly from the late 1850s onward, moving away from strict Pre-Raphaelite detail and toward broader, more commercial subjects and a freer painterly brush technique. Purists in the Pre-Raphaelite camp complained. Buyers didn't, and the new manner brought him enormous commercial success.

Go back to the Pre-Raphaelite Millais of 1848-1857 and the precision is extreme. Leaves and flowers are painted with botanical accuracy, and so is every detail of the fabric. The color is bright, often laid over a white ground that gave it extra luminosity, and the subjects carry serious moral and religious weight. "Ophelia" belongs to that strict phase. So does "Christ in the House of His Parents."

From the late 1850s his brushwork grew broader. All that detail gave way to a freer style that cared more about atmospheric effects and pictorial drama than about exact representational detail. "Autumn Leaves" (1856) catches the transition in progress, and by the 1860s the broader style was firmly established.

The subjects moved with the market. Serious religious and literary subjects, the Pre-Raphaelite staples, gave way to genre scenes and historical narratives. Sentimental subjects arrived as well (children especially), along with portraits of leading Victorian cultural figures. All of it appealed to the broad Victorian middle-class art market, and that market made him rich.

Not everyone liked it. Ruskin had championed the Pre-Raphaelite Millais, so the later work disappointed him, and he stopped his strong support. Hunt went further. He kept to strict Pre-Raphaelite principles throughout his career and was openly critical of the commercial direction his friend had taken. Rossetti was more sympathetic, which makes sense, since he had moved away from the strict principles himself in his own way.

As a business, the new style worked extremely well. Millais became one of the wealthiest British artists of his generation, his paintings selling for high prices and reproductive prints reaching huge audiences ("Bubbles" of 1886, the Pears soap advertisement, among the most widely reproduced Victorian paintings).

Was it a betrayal? Some critics read the road from Pre-Raphaelite rebel to commercial success and Royal Academy president that way. Others see a natural maturation, the point where Millais found his most successful artistic voice, and art historians are still arguing. We'd say you don't have to choose between "Ophelia" and "Bubbles." Both are him.

What is John Everett Millais known for?

Millais is known for several major contributions to Victorian British art: founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, painting some of the most iconic Pre-Raphaelite works (especially "Ophelia"), achieving enormous commercial success with later genre paintings and portraits, serving as President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and becoming one of very few artists ever given a hereditary baronetcy.

He packed the early part of that list into less than a decade. Between 1848 and 1857, still working by the Brotherhood's strict rules, he painted "Christ in the House of His Parents," one of the first Pre-Raphaelite pictures, and then "Ophelia," the most famous Pre-Raphaelite painting of them all. "Mariana" and "The Blind Girl" came out of the same years. In our view those canvases gave the Brotherhood its visual identity more than anything its members wrote.

The later fame paid better. After that it was genre paintings and portraits for the Victorian middle-class art market. "The Boyhood of Raleigh" arrived in 1870, a historical narrative. "Cherry Ripe" followed in 1879, all sentiment, and in 1886 came "Bubbles," which ended up selling soap. With the many portraits on top, that made him one of the most reproduced and commercially successful Victorian painters.

Reproduction explains the breadth of his influence on Victorian visual culture. Huge audiences knew his work from prints and illustrated journals ("Bubbles" from an advertisement), and his late Victorian visual style shaped popular taste well into the early twentieth century.

Meanwhile the Royal Academy drew him back in, electing him an Associate in 1853, just as he was drifting from the Brotherhood, and a full member in 1863. The presidency came in February 1896. That's nineteenth-century British art in one career, the outsider founder of the Pre-Raphaelites turned insider leader of the Royal Academy, much as avant-garde movements were gradually absorbed into the establishment.

Queen Victoria made him a baronet in 1885 (Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet). He was one of very few artists ever given a hereditary title, and after his death his son Everett Millais inherited it. We'd put it last on the list. It tells you about his enormous public stature in late Victorian Britain, but it isn't why anyone looks at his pictures now.

How many children did Millais have?

John Everett Millais and Effie Gray had eight children together over the course of their forty-one-year marriage (1855-1896). Everett Millais came first, in 1856, and George Gray Millais followed in 1857. Effie Gray Millais was born in 1858 and Mary Hunt Millais in 1860. Alice Sophia Caroline Millais arrived in 1862 and Geoffroy William Millais in 1863. Then John Guille Millais in 1865, and finally the youngest, Sophie Margaret Jameson Millais, in 1868. Eight births in twelve years.

A full house had its uses for a painter. Several of the children modeled for their father, and their images helped his success with sentimental genre paintings of children. "Cherry Ripe" (1879) and many other Millais paintings of children reached wide audiences through reproduction, and so did "Bubbles" (1886), though the boy in that one was his grandson, Willie James.

The eldest son, Everett Millais (1856-1897), inherited the baronetcy in 1896 and became Sir Everett Millais, 2nd Baronet. Later generations of the family kept the title going.

For historians, the seventh child is the important one. John Guille Millais (1865-1931) became a prominent naturalist and author, and a big-game hunter on top of that. He also wrote a major two-volume biography of his father, "The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais" (published 1899), which is still one of the standard primary sources on Millais's life.

Money was never the worry. Throughout his career the family lived in prosperity, with a London house at 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, from 1862 to 1878 and then at 2 Palace Gate, Kensington, and houses in Scotland, where they spent extended periods (Perthshire above all). His success and Effie's social organization made them one of the most prominent Victorian artistic families.

When did John Everett Millais die?

Sir John Everett Millais died on August 13, 1896, in London, at age 67. Throat cancer (laryngeal cancer) was the cause. It had been diagnosed earlier that year, and in his final months it had taken away his ability to speak.

The timing was cruel. He had been elected President of the Royal Academy of Arts in February 1896, only six months before he died. His health was falling away fast after the diagnosis, so the presidency was brief and largely ceremonial (he hardly got to use it). Death cut short what might have been a longer tenure at the head of the British art establishment.

Saint Paul's Cathedral held his funeral on August 20, 1896, a week after he died. He was buried in the cathedral's Painters' Corner (in the crypt), alongside other major British painters. A grand public funeral, and a grave in that company, show how big a figure he had become by the end.

His son, Sir Everett Millais, 2nd Baronet, inherited the baronetcy. Effie Gray Millais survived him by about sixteen months. She died on December 23, 1897, at 69, and with both parents gone, one of the most prominent late Victorian artistic households came to an end.

Critical taste has pushed his reputation around ever since. The Pre-Raphaelite paintings of his early career are still widely admired, while the later commercial pictures have had a more mixed reception. Modern art history has mostly put the emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelite work. Even so, a career that runs from "Ophelia" to a soap advertisement keeps drawing scholarly attention, and we can see why.

John Everett Millais questions

Who was John Everett Millais?

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was an English painter and illustrator, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), and one of the most successful Victorian painters. That's a lot of ground for 67 years. Born in Southampton in 1829, he was eleven when the Royal Academy schools took him (the youngest ever), and by 1896, the year he died, he was President of the Royal Academy of Arts. The Brotherhood he founded with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt in 1848 sits in the middle.

What is John Everett Millais known for?

Millais is known for founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, painting iconic Pre-Raphaelite works including "Ophelia" (1851-1852) and "Christ in the House of His Parents" (1849-1850), achieving enormous commercial success with later genre paintings and portraits including "Bubbles" (1886) and "The Boyhood of Raleigh" (1870), serving as President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and becoming one of very few artists ever given a hereditary baronetcy (in 1885). Which counts most depends on who you ask. Ask us and it's "Ophelia."

How many children did Millais have?

John Everett Millais and Effie Gray had eight children together: Everett, George Gray, Effie Gray, Mary Hunt, Alice Sophia Caroline, Geoffroy William, John Guille, and Sophie Margaret Jameson Millais. If you're researching the family, start with John Guille, whose major two-volume biography of his father came out in 1899. Several of the children sat as models for their father, and the eldest son inherited the Millais baronetcy in 1896.

How did he meet John Ruskin?

Millais met John Ruskin through Ruskin's critical support of the Pre-Raphaelites in 1851. That year Ruskin's letters in The Times defended the group against critical attacks and argued that their artistic program was serious. A friendship followed. In 1853 Effie Gray (Ruskin's unhappy wife) modeled in London for his painting "The Order of Release," and later that year Millais joined the Ruskins on a holiday at Glenfinlas in Perthshire, Scotland, painting a portrait of Ruskin. It didn't end well for Ruskin.

What was the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an artistic movement of young British painters and sculptors founded in London in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, along with James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, Thomas Woolner, and William Michael Rossetti. Millais was nineteen. The group set itself against the painting style taught at the Royal Academy, the place that had trained him, and looked back to the truth and simplicity of art before Raphael (1483-1520), detailed realism and all.

What is Millais's most famous painting?

Millais's most famous painting is "Ophelia" (1851-1852), depicting the drowned Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet floating in a stream surrounded by precisely depicted flowers and plants. He painted the background outdoors on the Hogsmill River in Surrey and the figure indoors, with Elizabeth Siddal posing in a bathtub. Now at Tate Britain, it's one of the most iconic works of Pre-Raphaelite painting and one of the most reproduced Victorian images. His other famous pictures include "Christ in the House of His Parents" (1849-1850) and "The Order of Release" (1853), plus "Bubbles" (1886).

When did John Everett Millais die?

Sir John Everett Millais died on August 13, 1896, in London, at age 67. He had held the presidency of the Royal Academy of Arts for only six months (he was elected in February 1896) when throat cancer killed him. He was buried at Saint Paul's Cathedral, in the Painters' Corner of the crypt, and his wife Effie Gray Millais died about sixteen months after him, on December 23, 1897.

Was John Everett Millais a baronet?

Yes. John Everett Millais was created a baronet (Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet) by Queen Victoria in 1885, one of very few artists ever given a hereditary title. So it didn't stop with him. It passed to his eldest son (Sir Everett Millais, 2nd Baronet) on his death in 1896 and continued through later generations of the Millais family.