British 1829-1896 Sir John Everett Millais Galleries After his marriage, Millais began to paint in a broader style, which was condemned by Ruskin as "a catastrophe". It has been argued that this change of style resulted from Millais' need to increase his output to support his growing family. Unsympathetic critics such as William Morris accused him of "selling out" to achieve popularity and wealth. His admirers, in contrast, pointed to the artist's connections with Whistler and Albert Moore, and influence on John Singer Sargent. Millais himself argued that as he grew more confident as an artist, he could paint with greater boldness. In his article "Thoughts on our art of Today" (1888) he recommended Vel??zquez and Rembrandt as models for artists to follow. The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878) The Boyhood of Raleigh (1871)Paintings such as The Eve of St. Agnes and The Somnambulist clearly show an ongoing dialogue between the artist and Whistler, whose work Millais strongly supported. Other paintings of the late 1850s and 1860s can be interpreted as anticipating aspects of the Aesthetic Movement. Many deploy broad blocks of harmoniously arranged colour and are symbolic rather than narratival. Later works, from the 1870s onwards demonstrate Millais' reverence for old masters such as Joshua Reynolds and Vel??zquez. Many of these paintings were of an historical theme and were further examples of Millais' talent. Notable among these are The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower (1878) depicting the Princes in the Tower, The Northwest Passage (1874) and the Boyhood of Raleigh (1871). Such paintings indicate Millais' interest in subjects connected to Britain's history and expanding empire. His last project was to be a painting depicting a white hunter lying dead in the African veldt, his body contemplated by two indifferent Africans. This fascination with wild and bleak locations is also evident in his many landscape paintings of this period, which usually depict difficult or dangerous terrain. The first of these, Chill October (1870) was painted in Perth, near his wife's family home. Many others were painted elsewhere in Perthshire, near Dunkeld and Birnam, where Millais rented grand houses each autumn in order to hunt and fish. Millais also achieved great popularity with his paintings of children, notably Bubbles (1886) ?C famous, or perhaps notorious, for being used in the advertising of Pears soap ?C and Cherry Ripe.   Related Paintings of Sir John Everett Millais :. | isabella | Dew-Drenched Furze | Ophelia | Winter Fuel | The Black Brunswicker |
Related Artists:
VEEN, Otto van
Flemish painter (b. 1556, Leiden, d. 1629, Bruxelles). Flemish painter and draughtsman of Dutch birth. Although born in Holland, he is regarded as an artist of the Catholic southern Netherlands, where he spent most of his active life. He seems to have been acquainted with most of the Netherlandish scholars of his time, and his works testify to his broad humanistic learning. This and his prominent role in the early manifestations of the Counter-Reformation in Antwerp may have led Rubens to choose him as a teacher. Van Veen's importance as an artist has often been compared to the career of his famous pupil, for whom he was certainly the most important exemplar of the pictor doctus or learned painter. Van Veen obviously represents the older generation's more classicizing and conservative response to the Counter-Reformation. For him, the return to the spiritual values of the past also implied a recovery of the pictorial style of the High Renaissance, with its deliberate borrowings from the paintings of such artists as Raphael and Correggio.
Josef Feid
Austria (1806-1870 ) - Painter
William Huggins
British 1820-84