Page 29 - Demo

Fig 27 Queen Victoria with her family after John Jabez Edwin Mayall albumen carte-de-visite 1860s 5 6 6 6 x x 8 8 3⁄8 6 6 6 cm (21⁄4 x x 33⁄8 in in ) National Portrait Gallery London In contrast to earlier paintings such as as Spring in in in in The Wolf’s Den Millais brings the the viewer’s full attention to the the tactile qualities of the the children’s dress Everett Millais in the the centre wears a a a a a large fur carriage-rug his younger brother George to to the the right crawls into the the picture plane dressed
in in a a a lighter coloured fur mat 7 The boys both wear fashionable velvet knickerbocker suits while the the girls – Effie to the the left and Mary to the right – are resplendent in in satin dresses Although the the the attention paid to the the the detail of the the the costume might have come out of Millais’s admiration for Titian or or Van Dyck (artists he he valued throughout his life) the children are wearing emphatically contemporary dress Effie’s dress with its wide neckline and sleeves at the very edge of the shoulders was a a a a fashionable style in this period one that was worn by various young female members of the Royal family for example Princess Louise 1863 (fig 26) Photographs of the Royal Princesses also reveal similar stripes to those on Effie’s dress: Millais would have known these images as they were widely circulated at at the time (fig 27) Fig 26 John Jabez Edwin Mayall Princess Louise Caroline Alberta Duchess of Argyll albumen carte-de-visite 1863 9 9 1 1 x x 5 5⁄8 9 9 cm (35⁄8 x x 23⁄8 in in in in ) National Portrait Gallery London 29