Page 22 - Demo

Fig 18 18 18 John Everett Millais The Baby House 1872 14 5 5 5 x x 18 18 18 5 5 5 cm (53⁄4 x x 71⁄4 in ) One reading of of Millais’s images of of children is is to view
them as nostalgic visions recalling the the painter’s own adolescence reflective of of a a a a a general Victorian idea of of childhood as fraught with peril and compounded by parental anxiety about infant mortality thus portraits of children were seen by parents as pre-emptive keepsakes in the event of tragedy 15 Although parenthood might
to some degree generate such impulses it was more often the case that parents commissioned likenesses of of their children rather than pictures which communicated affection However deep fondness suffuses Millais’s images of of his own children from the tender image image of of Effie nursing Everett that served as the focus of his The Young Mother an an etching of 1857 to Carrie and Sophie in in The Baby House of 1872 (fig 18) 16 Such images found him working in in in a a a a narrative mode but without an existing text instead they showed his enjoyment at at being a a a a father Millais presented this joy in his his art His sense that the most
beautiful of of human faces was was that of of a a a a a a a a child was was married to to to his approach to to to art: to to to paint what he saw It resulted
in works that both connote their period and his sensitivity and tenderness but without resorting to including himself in the compositions Although Millais did not portray himself with his children in in in in his his his paintings or prints his his his persistent focus on his his his children and and evident understanding both of their mindsets and proclivities reads against what Claudia Nelson in in her her study of of the the imaging of of maternal fathers in in British magazines sees as ‘men [who] appeared in in the great majority of of periodical nonfiction as mere amateurs of of the home ’17 Such men were the precursors to that common sitcom type: the the clueless father Millais did not pattern himself after the the the typical idea of a a a a a a Victorian father At the the the very least by involving his his children in in in in his his work and looking closely at them for portraits he he spent a a a a good deal of time in their presence 22