Page 15 - Demo

Fig 11 John Everett Millais Waking 1865 90 8 8 x x 70 5 5 5 cm (353⁄4 x x 273⁄4 in in ) Perth Museum & Art Gallery Scotland She leans on a a a a a book and her her cherubic face is is recognisable from her similar appearance in in Waking 1865 (Perth Museum and Art Gallery fig 11) George steams into the picture on the far right under a a a lighter coloured pelt and his uncertain expression and glance towards his older brother reveals him to be seeking assurance that he is in in proper lupine mode Below him is a a ceramic Chinese figurine The picture is is is instantly recognisable as Millais in in the early 1860s
due to the palette all scarlet and and crimson and and vermillion and maroon as in My First Sermon 1863 (fig 38) and My Second Sermon 1864 (both Guildhall Art Gallery London) and and the artist’s increasingly deft and and attractive
manner of painting from the assured touches absent
of hard drawing in in the the portrait faces to the the spectacularly bright edging of of Everett’s cloak against the dark void of of his body Millais’s former Pre-Raphaelite brother the the critic F G Stephens wrote of the picture in 1882 that one could almost hear the boys’ growls continuing that ‘The beauty of of of the the the children is worthy of of of the the the best art of of of the the the painter who rivals even Rubens Velázquez and Reynolds the masters of childhood in art ’2 However The Wolf’s Den communicates much more than Millais’s project in the 1860s
to develop a a a new kind of of image of of childhood it is a a a picture of the personal 15