MILLAIS, SIR JOHN EVERETT English painter, was born at Southampton on June 8, 1829, the son of John William Millais, who belonged to an old Norman family settled in Jersey for many generations, and Emily Mary, nee Evamy, the widow of a Mr. Hodgkinson. After his birth the family returned to Jersey. In 1835 they removed to Dinan in Brittany. In 1838 he came to London, and on the strong recom mendation of Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A., his future was de cided. He was sent to Sass's school, and entered the Academy schools in 1840. He won a silver medal from the Society of Arts in 1839, and carried off all the prizes at the Royal Academy. He was at this time painting small pictures for a dealer named Thomas, and defraying a great part of the household expenses in Gower Street, where his family lived. In 1846 he exhibited "Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru" at the Royal Academy. In 1847 he competed unsuccessfully for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, sending a very large picture of "The Widow's Mite." In 1848 Millais and W. Holman Hunt, dissatisfied with the theory and practice of British art, initiated what is known as the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and were joined by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and afterwards by five others, altogether forming the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti was then engaged, under the technical guidance of Hunt, upon his picture of "The Girl hood of Mary Virgin," which, with Hunt's "Light of the World" and Millais's "Christ in the House of His Parents," forms what has been called the trilogy of Pre-Raphaelite art. According to Millais, the Pre-Raphaelites had but one idea—"to present on canvas what they saw in Nature." Millais's first picture on his new principles was a banquet scene from Keats's "Isabella" (1849), and contains all the characteristics of Pre-Raphaelite work, including minute imitation of nature down to the smallest detail. The tale was told with dramatic force, and the expression of the heads was excellent. His next important picture, "Christ in the House of His Parents," or "The Carpenter's Shop" (185o), representing a supposed incident in the childhood of our Lord treated in a realistic manner, drew down upon him a storm of abuse. The rest of his more strictly Pre-Raphaelite pictures— "The Return of the Dove to the Ark," "The Woodsman's Daughter" and the "Mariana" of 1851, "The Huguenot" and "Ophelia" of 1852, "The Proscribed Royalist" and "The Order of Release" of 1853—met with less opposition, and established his reputation with the public. Indeed, this may be said to have been
accomplished by "The Huguenot" and "Ophelia." The public were also greatly influenced by the championship of Ruskin, who, in letters to The Times, and in a pamphlet called "Pre-Raphaelit ism," enthusiastically espoused the cause of the Brotherhood. Millais became acquainted with Ruskin, and in 1853 went to Scotland with him and Mrs. Ruskin, the latter of whom sat for the woman in "The Order of Release." In 1855 Millais exhibited "The Rescue," a scene from a fire. This was also the year of his marriage with Mrs. Ruskin (Euphemia Chalmers, daughter of Mr. George Gray of Bowerswell, Perth), who had obtained a decree of the nullity of her previous marriage. The principal pictures of 1856 were "Autumn Leaves" and "Peace Concluded"; of 1857 "Sir Isumbras at the Ford," and "The Escape of a Heretic"; of 1859, "Apple-blossoms" and "Vale of Rest." The "Black Brunswicker" of 186o was in motive very like the "Hugue not," but it was a great deal broader in execution, and may be said to mark the end of the period of transition from his minute Pre-Raphaelite manner to the freedom of his mature style.
From 186o to 1869 Millais was much employed in illustration, especially of Trollope's novels. He contributed to Moxon's illustrated edition of Tennyson's Poems, and made occasional drawings for Once a Week, the Illustrated London News, Good Words, and other periodicals and books. In 1863 he was elected a Royal Academician. The most important pictures of this and the next few years were "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Romans leav ing Britain" (1865), "Jephthah" (1867), "Rosalind and Celia" (1868), "A Flood," and "The Boyhood of Raleigh" (187o). In many of his pictures of this period, such as "The Boyhood of Raleigh," his children were his models. In 1871 he exhibited the first and most popular of his pure landscapes, called "Chill October." Other landscapes from Perthshire, where he generally spent the autumn, included "Scotch Firs" and "Winter Fuel" (painted in 1874), "Over the Hills and Far Away," and "The Fringe of the Moor" (1875) and "The Sound of Many Waters" (1876).