|
|
John Everett Millais
At the Rijksmuseum it's Rembrandt's The Night Watch. For the Prado it is Diego Velázquez's Les Meninas, and for the Tate Britain, the piece every visitor must see is Sir John Everett Millais's depiction of Ophelia. The painting formed part of the original Henry Tate Gift to create the Tate Britain in 1894. The gift included the Tate's collection of 65 paintings and 2 pieces of sculpture as well as the financial support to create, in the sugar baron's own words, he wanted "to have the best lighted Gallery in Europe and I cannot be a party to building a gallery in which every picture would not have top light." Ophelia is one of the Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate's collection. Victorian painters such as Millais often looked to Shakespearean images for their subjects. Millais's depicts the tragic death as Ophelia falls into the water and drowns. His painting is one of the best-known images drawn from Hamlet. If it's the most popular artwork certainly the artist deserves a solo retrospective and the Tate Britain answers with their exhibition devoted to Sir John Everett Millais, the greatest Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist. Tate Britain
|
|
|
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was the creation of Millais, along with his fellow artists William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They looked to the time before the Renaissance for inspiration, prior to da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael's dominance. The artists found inspiration from literature, often painted directly from nature. The respected art critic John Ruskin encouraged artists to 'go to Nature ... rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing'. |
In Hamlet, Ophelia's death doesn't occur on stage but is mentioned by other characters. Ophelia goes mad after her lover, Hamlet, murders her father Polonius. Ophelia, driven beyond sanity with grief, picks flowers near a stream, falls in and dies. Millais used Elizabeth Siddall as his model for Ophelia. She was required to lie in a bathtub filled with water heated with overhead lights. Her subsequent contraction of a cold led her father to threaten legal action for the sum of £50. Millais settled the matter for less. Elizabeth Siddall eventually wed Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Title: Mariana, 1851
Artist: Sir John Everett Millais (English 1829-1896)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 23 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches
Image Courtesy & ©: Tate Britain
Lord Tennyson's 1830 poem Mariana, derived from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, was the impetus behind Millais's painting of the same name.
For Millais Mariana is the image of waiting as Mariana awaits the return of her lover, Angelo. There is a haunting quality to the work, the viewer knows that Angelo lost Mariana's dowry and has abandoned her. She concentrates on her embroidery, passing time that will never end. There is a sense of religion in the image created by the stained glass window triptych in front of Mariana. The Angel Gabriel, who appeared to the Virgin in her mother's house, is depicted in the triptych gesturing to Mariana with his fingers. Religious themes continue with the altar, altarpiece, and incense burner, all part of the scene of spirituality and longing.
Title: Isabella, 1848-1849
Artist: Sir John Everett Millais (English 1829-1896)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 103 x 142.8 cm
© The Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool
Image Courtesy: Tate Britain
Isabella was among the first paintings created reflecting the then new Pre-Raphaelite movement. Literature yet again is the theme with the subject from a Keats poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, that was based on an Italian novella, Decameron, with its 100 novellas by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Keats draws from the story of Lisabetta. Boccaccio's Lisabetta is a tragic story. Her brothers discover her secret lover Lorenzo and murder him. Lorenzo appears to Lisabetta in a dream and tells her where to find his body. She dismembers his head and keeps it in a basil pot, which her brothers discover and destroy, leading to Lisabetta's death from her broken heart.
Rossetti and Hunt were the first of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to seek inspiration from Keats; Rossetti called him 'the greatest modern poet'. Hunt introduced Millais to Keat's works, which had fallen out of favor and was largely not re-published until after the poet's 1821 death. Hunt and Millais originally wanted to create etchings for Keat's poem. Instead John Everett Millais created large paintings from his drawings among the first was Isabella; Hunt didn't get past the drawing stage for his homage to Keat's verse.
Look closely and in Isabella is Dante Gabriel Rossetti drinking from a wine glass in the background. Symbolism abounds. One of Isabella's brothers launches a kick at her dog. Isabella and her lover Lorenzo eat a shared blood orange, hinting at the tragedy they will face. In the background of the painting is a pot of herbs, suggesting the ending of the tragic tale.
Title: Lingering Autumn, 1890
Artist: Sir John Everett Millais (English 1829-1896)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 124.7 x 195.5 cm
© The Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool
Image Courtesy: Tate Britain
Nature was an important part of the Pre-Raphaelite work and Millais often spent the fall in Perthshire, Scotland. Lingering Autumn was one of numerous works based on the beautiful Scottish landscape. The River Tay is depicted in this painting.
Title: Sir John Everett Millais, Effie and their daughters Effie and Mary, Cromwell Place by Lewis Carroll 1865
Photographer: Lewis Carroll (English 1832-1898)
Gernsheim Collection.
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
© The University of Texas at Austin
Image Courtesy: Tate Britain
It was a popular place with the artist and his wife. Millais took a trip to Scotland with John Ruskin and Ruskin's wife Euphemia Chalmers Grey, who was the daughter of a Scottish family from Perth. Unfortunately for Ruskin, Millais and Effie grew attached.
Effie was able to annul her unconsummated marriage and became Millais's wife. The scandal kept her from Royal court, despite Queen Victoria's enjoyment of Millais's artwork. Ruskin was very forgiving, and continued to add his critical voice to support Millais and the Pre-Raphaelites.
|
Millais used his wife as a subject in The Order of Release 1746. The image is of the release of a Jacobite soldier who the English imprisoned after the losses suffered at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The soldier has received a release order that his wife hands to his jailers. The Jacobites supported King James VII of Scotland, also called King James II of Britain. |
|
The Scottish King fled to avoid the invading William of Orange's troops. The British feared James's Catholicism and invited his Protestant daughter and her husband William of Orange to the throne. James's son was called the Great Pretender who would have been James III had he taken the throne, in turn his son, James's grandson was called Bonnie Prince Charlie. There were many uprisings, including one in 1746 at Culloden, where today there is a monument to the battle. In contrast to Ophelia or Mariana, here the female figure is strong and takes charge to obtain her husband's freedom, not longing for lost love and facing a tragic end.
The Tate Britain is the first stop on this exciting exhibit celebrating the great British Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais.
Millais
Tate Britain:
September 26, 2007 – January 13, 2008
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam:
February 15 – May 13 2008
Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan
June 7 - August 17, 2008
Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan
August 30 - October 26, 2008