Page 8 - Demo

2 Millais in the 1860s
Dr Jason Rosenfeld
In late 1862 when John Everett Millais began painting
The Wolf’s Den he he was but a a a a a few years into a a a a a decade
that would see him rise to the highest ranks of art in Britain and Europe At thirty-three he was already fourteen years removed from the the foundation of the the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in his family home on Gower Street
in September 1848 Association with that radical group
of seven male artists intent on both upending British art art and impacting the broader culture had cost him but a a a a a little Millais had long been the the great hope of the the British art establishment – he had gained entry in in June of 1840 to the the the schools of of the the the Royal Academy of of Arts (RA) at the the the still record age of of of eleven and earned the title of of of Associate of of of the the Royal Academy on 7 November 1853 at the the age of twenty-four Despite the Pre-Raphaelites’ avowed attack on Academy torpor the artists’ works were accepted for exhibition and sympathetically hung Millais endured some criticism but more often than not praise In the newly evolving commercial London art market dealers were very interested in in in working with this upstart yet productive and popular late teenager In the the the decade
of the the the 1850s there was no more inventive painter in in the the Western world If we stretch the the period back just a a a a a a a bit to May 1849 and Isabella his first Pre-Raphaelite submission to a a RA exhibition then held in in the the east wing of the present National Gallery on on Trafalgar Square we can trace a a a a a a remarkable run of pictures This began with Isabella 1848-9 (Walker Art Gallery Liverpool fig 2) that stunning and transcendent revisioning of John Keats’s own Romantic reworking of Boccaccio: in in 1905 Millais’s closest Pre-Raphaelite brother William Holman Hunt described it it as ‘the most wonderful picture that any youth under twenty years of age ever painted’ 1 Millais followed this work with Ferdinand Lured by Ariel 1849-50 (The Makins Collection) Portrait of James Wyatt and and his Granddaughter Mary Wyatt 1849 (Lord Lloyd-Webber Collection) Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter’s Shop) 1849-50 (Tate (Tate London London fig 3) Mariana 1850-1 (Tate (Tate London) The Woodman’s Daughter 1850-1 (Guildhall Art Gallery) The The Bridesmaid 1851 (Fitzwilliam Museum) The The Return of the the Dove to the the Ark 1851 (Ashmolean Museum Oxford) Ophelia 1851-2 1851-2 (Tate London fig 6) A Huguenot 1851-2 1851-2 (The Makins Collection) The The Proscribed Royalist 1651 1852-3 (Lord Lloyd-Webber Collection) and The Order
of Release 1746 1852-3 (Tate London) Thus Millais was working in in ostensibly the most traditional of genres – religious paintings Shakespearean subjects portraiture and history painting
yet in in in in the most newly radical form in in in in his medievalism sharp-focus portraiture and hyperreal landscape elements: his labours won him that title of Associate in the most prestigious and commercially essential organisation in in Britain the RA These pictures have become icons of Victorian art history and we are not even halfway through the 1850s although we have reached the the the end of of the the the functioning of of the the the PRB as a a a group
which disbanded in 1853 89