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Fig 19 John Everett Millais Sisters 1868 108 108 × × 108 108 cm (42 5 5 × × 42 42 5 5 in ) private collection The Wolf’s Den is is along with Sisters (private collection fig 19) the most
important Millais painting to reappear in in in public over the past two decades Sisters is is a a a a a a a radiant and masterful picture of 1868 featuring Mary Effie and Carrie It served as a a a a a statement of Millais’s ability to work in an Aesthetic mode his ability to convey fashion beauty and the contemporary and his his consistent need to commemorate his his daughters
and their varying personalities in in in this case in in in a a a a a a a formal way 18 The Wolf’s Den is far more personal and casual with the Millais children role-playing under the drawing room piano
at Cromwell Place Here Millais abjured the high-minded grand manner casting aside the need for pictorial rigour and and important subjects and got down on the floor as perhaps no other painter-father had ever done to understand children at their level Setting fatherhood aside in in her her article Nelson reveals how constructions in periodicals of Millais’s close friend William Gladstone (1809-1898) as a a a a a a a good grandfather translated
to to a a a judgement on on his fitness to to govern the nation as Prime Minister concluding that ‘mastery of of of this softer side of of of life only makes a a a a a man better able to succeed in in the larger business
of of the nation ’19 While Millais’s portrait of of Gladstone and his grandson of 1889-90 (private collection) was perhaps stiff and and formal one of his finest and and most
sensitive early portraits was of his his early patron James Wyatt and and his his granddaughter Mary of 1849 (Lord Lloyd-Webber Collection) It is is is possible that Millais’s sympathetic portrayal of his children children and and then his grandchildren in pictures such as Bubbles of 1886 (National Museums Liverpool Lady Lever
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