John Millais; Sellout or One of the Greatest Artists of His Era?

Article

In Arthur Symons’ article “A lesson of Millais”, which was published in Volume 6 of The Savoy in1896. The article is about John Everett Millais, who was a very well known artist at the time. In February 1865, Arthur William Symons was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales.  Although he had a distinctive private education, he was conscious of his strong desire to become a successful writer.  He became a member of the Rhymers’ Club by socializing with poets of the day. He was a literary critic as well as the popular but transient Savoy magazine’s editor for a brief time. Arthur Symons suffered from many mental illnesses and sadly this caused him his life in his 40s and his career was cut short. In his article about Millais, Symons talks about how Millais was known to be one of the most influential painters. He also believed that Millais did not reach his full potential as an artist and had many major setbacks. Symons believed that Millais would paint anything he knew would give him instant money and fame, instead of painting what he truly wanted to. He was not able to express his full artistic side. He argued that Millais could have been one the greatest artists of his generation if he wasn’t so money motivated. Everyone knew how talented Millais was, and as a reaction, they subjected him to a very high standard.

 

Early Days

Sir John Everett Millais was born June 8, 1829, in Southampton, England. He was born into a notably prominent family in Southampton. From a very early age Millais showed artistic talent. To further his arts degree, Millais and his parents relocated to London in 1838. The greatest impact on his younger years was his mother’s persuasive demeanour. She was passionate in music and art, and she supported her son’s creative nature by pressing for the family to move to London. Before gaining admission to the Royal Academy, a prestigious art school, at age 11, he originally began at Sass’ Art School. Millais was indeed a child prodigy and the youngest student at the Royal Academy, gaining him the title “The Child.” The Royal Academy awarded Millais gold and silver medals for his works of art. His very first painting was Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru in 1846.  While attending the Royal Academy, Millais befriended William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which all three of them went on to form The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 

 

Pre Raphaelites

Millais was one of the founding members of the Pre Raphaelites Brotherhood, alongside William Holam Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelites, who were self-promoters seeking recognition and attention, their work caused a great deal of debate and controversy. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood supposedly wanted to contrast the false and boring historical paintings of the Royal Academy with a new spiritual severity and sincerity in their artwork; they were committed to painting realistic, lifelike scenes with great attention to detail. Pre-Raphaelites gained popularity among the general public thanks to this unconventional perspective on the issues at the time that generated great controversy and debate. The Brotherhood challenged the Royal Academy’s endorsement, Raphael was a Renaissance artist whose work avoided depictions of everyday life or actual fact and instead focused on perfection. In the 1800s and the early 1900s, many artists adopted Raphael’s ideas and style, but the brotherhood disagreed with his belief that flaws shouldn’t be displayed in art. Early works by the brotherhood had a strong religious subject, but as time went on, they also found inspiration from poetry and literature, focusing mostly on love and death. The group’s most talented artist, Millais, created work that was extremely realistic, filled with fine detail, and emphasized the wonders of nature. While previous artists attempted to idealize and glamorize religious figures, the Pre-Raphaelites depicted them with an unusual level of realism, highlighting the flaws and real aspects. A majority of what they chose to portray were rather audacious for the period, such as taboo topics like poverty, deportation, prostitution, and the social hypocritical standard regarding sexual morality. Despite their hopes for improvement and influence, the Pre-Raphaelites did not instantly succeed. The National Institution and even the Royal Academy hosted exhibitions of the painters’ work. However, they opted to sign their artwork with “PRB” rather than their names in order to maintain their anonymity. Unfortunately, despite their devotion, lack of shades, flattened figures, and use of bright colors, they encountered harsh criticism. 

 

Critics/Criticism

John Millais received a major ton of backlash and criticism from many famous critics all around England. It is obvious that if you are going to put out controversial work, people are going to have a lot to say about it and give you their opinion. For depicting the biblical figures as common people in an everyday environment, Millais’ artwork Christ in the House of His Parents received harsh criticism. Charles Dickens openly bashed the work and admitted to hating it, even went to the extent to call it “ugly”. Because of the commotion this painting caused, Queen Victoria insisted on seeing it so she could assess it for herself. The young Christ, whose arm has just been hurt, is in the centre of the artwork being treated by his mother, the Virgin. Christ’s injury, a hole in his hand, foretells his fatal outcome on the cross. In a reference to Christ washing his followers’ feet, a young St. John the Baptist tenderly offers a bucket of water to cleanse the wound. In addition to Joseph, St. Anne (the mother of the Virgin) and a carpenter’s helper, all respond to Christ’s mishap. Millais had many people disagree with him and the Pre Raphaelites Brotherhood, multiple critics wrote many terrible articles and reviews about their work. This is mainly because of how real and sincere their work was, no one else was putting out paintings with such taboo topics. Although the paintings caused a great deal of debate and anger, many people were still very fascinated by them because they have never seen such art. No one was doing what the Pre Raphaelites did, and making such controversial paintings because it was unheard of at the time and it took a lot of confidence to be able to do so. 

Wife/Family

John Millais married Effie Gray Millais, who was formerly married to John Ruskin who was a very famous critic at the time. Funny enough, he would always analyze and critique John Millais’ work, he was very fond of the artist’s painting. It had been rumoured that Ruskin is to blame for Effie and Millais’ relationship, when the three of them traveled to Scotland, it has even been asserted that Ruskin tried to consciously leave Effie and Millais alone together for extended periods of time. Ruskin also pushed Millais to use Effie as the model and the inspiration for the comically titled painting The Order for Release, in which she is shown as a devoted wife delivering the release documents for her jailed husband. Eventually, Effie was inspired by Millais’ attentiveness to ask for a divorce of her marriage upon the grounds of non-consumption due to impotence. Even though it would have been humiliating, Ruskin was happy to accept the allegation because, as a male, he was exempt from a physical examination. On the other side, Effie was made to go through two physicians’ examinations, and they determined that she was still in fact a virgin. When it was well acknowledged that Ruskin’s wife intended divorcing him for Millais, there was unavoidably major controversy. Many believed that Effie should’ve just endured her marriage, like so many other women did in the Victorian times, instead of letting the world know the personal information about their relationship. Although Millais was made a baronet, Queen Victoria declined to ever welcome Effie at court as a sign of her disdain. After marrying Effie, Millais went on to have eight children with her.

Mainstream Work

During this time, Millais created a number of outstanding paintings, including Autumn Leaves (1855), as his artistic career entered a new phase. His later works departed from Pre-Raphaelites, he started producing works that were much more mature. By the end of the 1850s, Millais had developed a wide range of skills and was even utilizing his artwork to express his political views. He also started using his own kids as the models. He immediately received numerous contracts for child portraits as a result of his talent for capturing the essence of youth. However, as he began to make a consistent income from the purchases of his newer paintings, in which there was an increasing demand, his illustration and older works would soon dwindle. Millais started to paint artworks that he knew would sell and give him immediate money. This is what Arthur Symons’ was arguing, that Millais was a sell out and that he only cared about making money. Symons suggested that Millais was much more talented than what he portrayed and that he could have been the greatest artist of his time if he was only more focussed on his artistic side than being money motivated. Many critics agreed with Symons’ and judged Millais for his choice of art. What many people do not know is that Millais had eight children, and he had no choice but to put out work that he knew was going to give him money in order to fund his big family. He was aware that his prior work was not doing as well and that was not enough to help his family. Even though he had been painting portraits since his first days at the Academy, his more skilled portraits, which were done in a thicker impasto manner, earned him fresh respect.

Conclusion

How can Millais really be a sellout if he was one of the best of his time. He had the money, he was well known and his paintings gained a huge amount of attention from multiple people. It is unfair to call him a sellout because he did not paint work that pleased everyone. He was trying to fund his family and the only way doing that was producing art that he knew would give him money. Millais was told he had laryngeal cancer in 1894, his health took a serious hit. He had surgery, followed by a time of recovery, but his headache and eye problems only became worse. His later works, which veered back to religious themes, were probably inspired by his anxiety of his declining health. The greatest rank in the British art establishment, President of the Royal Academy, was awarded to Millais on February 20, 1896, but because of his health, he was unable to fully appreciate and accept it. But only a few months later, he was forced to undergo a tracheotomy, which left him unable to speak. Queen Victoria was so affected by this that she wrote to him to see if there was anything she could do to help. So how could you really call him a sellout when he had multiple awards, not to mention the highest rank of accomplishment. How could you really call him a sellout when he was the most successful and richest artist of his time? How could you call him a sellout when he changed his style of art because he wanted to fund his family? John Millais paved the way for many artists and was able to give upcoming artists confidence to paint whatever they please.

 

 

Sources

Tate. “Sir John Everett Millais, Bt 1829–1896.” Tate, 31 Dec. 1859, www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-john-everett-millais-bt-379

“How the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Shocked the Art World: 5 Key Paintings.” TheCollector, 27 Feb. 2021, www.thecollector.com/how-pre-raphaelites-brotherhood-shocked-the-art-world/

“John Ruskin’s Marriage: What Really Happened.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 29 Mar. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/29/ruskin-effie-marriage-inconvenience-brownell

“Arthur Symons Biography.” Victorian Era, 14 Oct. 2020, victorian-era.org/victorian-authors/arthur-symons-biography.html.

Chatfield, Stephanie, et al. “The Happy Marriage of Effie Millais the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Blog.” Pre, 8 Sept. 2016, preraphaelitesisterhood.com/the-happy-marriage-of-effie-millais/

“Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-John-Everett-Millais-1st-Baronet

Tate. “’Christ in the House of His Parents (‘the Carpenter’s Shop’)’, Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, 1849–50.” Tate, www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-christ-in-the-house-of-his-parents-the-carpenters-shop-n03584

Symons, Arthur. “The Lesson of Millais.” The Savoy vol. 6, October 1896, pp. 57-58. Savoy Digital Edition, edited by Christopher Keep and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2018-2020. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2019. https://1890s.ca/savoyv6-symons-millais/

Millais, John Everett. “Christ in the House of His Parents.” Obelisk Art History, 1 Jan. 1970, arthistoryproject.com/artists/john-everett-millais/christ-in-the-house-of-his-parents/.

Soptica, Ciprian I. “JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS AND THE “PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD”: THE FIRST AVANT-GARDE MOVEMENT IN ART.” Agathos, vol. 4, no. 2, 2013, pp. 73-79. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/john-everett-millais-pre-raphaelite-brotherhood/docview/1465598042/se-2

Staley, Allen. “Pre-Raphaelites in the 1860s: I Rossetti.” The British Art Journal, vol. 4, no. 3, 2003, pp. 5–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41614486. Accessed 7 Dec. 2022.