Liberal Arts Blog — John Everett Millais (1829–1896) “Christ in the House of His Parents” (1849), “Ophelia (1851), “Autumn Leaves” (1856)
Liberal Arts Blog: Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Design, Film, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic: John Everett Millais (1829–1896) “Christ in the House of His Parents” (1849), “Ophelia (1851), “Autumn Leaves” (1856)
This week I met a Danish tourist who told me that her favourite painting in the world is “Autumn Leaves” by Millet, or at least I thought I heard the name “Millet” as in Jean Francois Millet, but, no, she was referring to a painting by “John Everett Millais.” Having no idea who this was, I decided to find out. I was not disappointed.
A child prodigy, Millais at age 11 was “the youngest student ever to enter the Royal Academy schools.” A founder of the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” he was later accused of “selling out” and became one of the wealthiest artists in England. “Millais notoriously allowed one of his paintings to be used for a sentimental soap advertisement.” Shocking! Imagine that!
Today, notes on three of Millais’s paintings.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS (1849) — What a discovery! I love it! Charles Dickens hated it.
1. “The painting depicts the young Jesus assisting Joseph in his workshop. Joseph is making a door, which is laid upon his carpentry work-table. Jesus has cut his hand on an exposed nail, symbolizing the stigmata (Jesus’s wounds on the cross) and foreshadowing Jesus’s crucifixion. Some of the blood has fallen onto his foot. As Jesus’s grandmother, Anne, removes the nail with a pair of pincers, his concerned mother, Mary, offers her cheek for a kiss. Joseph examines Jesus’s wounded hand. A young boy, who would later be known as John the Baptist, brings in water to wash the wound, prefiguring his later baptism of Christ. An assistant of Joseph, who represents Jesus’s future Apostles, observes these events.”
2. “In the background of the painting various objects are used to further symbolize the theological significance of the subject. A ladder, referring to Jacob’s Ladder, leans against the back wall, and a dove which represents the Holy Spirit rests on it. Other carpentry implements refer to the Holy Trinity.”
3. “Charles Dickens accused Millais of portraying Mary as an alcoholic who looks “so hideous in her ugliness that…she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France or the lowest gin-shop in England.”
NB: “Critics also objected to the portrayal of Jesus, one complaining that it was “painful” to see “the youthful Saviour” depicted as a “red-haired Jew boy.” Dickens described him as a “wry-necked, blubbering red-headed boy in a bed-gown who appears to have received a poke…playing in an adjacent gutter. Other critics suggested that the characters displayed signs of rickets and other disease associated with slum conditions. Because of the controversy, Queen Victoria asked for the painting to be taken to Buckingham Palace so that she could view it in private.”
OPHELIA (1851) — from Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII — “in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns”
1. Queen Gertrude’s speech: “There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element; but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.”
2. “Ophelia’s death has been praised as one of the most poetically written death scenes in literature…..Ophelia’s pose — her open arms and upwards gaze — also resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been interpreted as erotic….The painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape has come to be seen as quintessentially English. Ophelia was painted along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey near Tolworth.”
3. “Ophelia was modeled by artist. and muse Elizabeth Siddall, then 19 years old. Millais had Siddall lie fully clothered in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London. As it was now winter, he placed oil lamps under the tub to warm the water, but was so intent on his work that he allowed them to go out. As a result, Siddall caught a severe cold, and her father later sent Millais a letter demanding 50 pounds for medical expenses. According to MIllais’s son, he eventually accepted a lower sum.”
NB: “Millais encountered various difficulties during the painting process. He wrote in a letter to a friend, “The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay…and am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.” The painting is now “considered to be one of the great masterpieces of Pre-Raphaelite art.” (see 5th link below for a SmartHistory video).
AUTUMN LEAVES (1848) — the great art critic John Ruskin described this as “the first instance of a perfectly painted twilight”
1. “Millais’s wife Effie (previously married to Ruskin) wrote that he had intended to create a picture that was “full of beauty and without a subject.”
2. “The picture depicts four girls in the twilight collecting and raking together fallen leaves in a garden, a location now occupied by Rodney Gardens in Perth, Scotland. They are making a bonfire but the fire itself is invisible, only smoke emerging from between the leaves. The two girls on the left, modelled on Millais’s sisters-in-law Alice and Sophie Gray, are portrayed in middle-class clothing, the two on the right are in rougher, working class clothing.”
3. “The painting has typically been interpreted as a representation of the transience of youth and beauty, a common theme in Millais’s art. Malcolm Warner argues that Millais was influenced by the poetry of Tennyson, at whose house he had once helped together autumn leaves.”
NB: “After a positive review from F.G. Stephens., Millais wrote to him that he had “intended the picture to awaken by its solemnity the deepest religious reflection. I chose the subject of burning leaves as most calculated to produce this feeling.” Below a sculpture of “Millais’s Viewpoint” in Rodney Gardens in Perth, Scotland. Have you been?
1. “Millais’ Viewpoint’ is both a point of view and a literal view. The scene is captured by two corners of a huge picture frame placed on a mound, framing the ever-changing view over the Tay.”
2. “These stone corners are placed so that one can walk between them, entering and leaving the picture.”
3. The Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais was drawn to two features that this sculpture frames. From his viewpoint, Kinnoull old kirkyard, which is where his wife Effie and their son George are now buried, became the setting for his painting ‘The Vale of Rest’, and the silhouette of the distinctive tower of St John’s kirk is shown in the background of ‘Autumn Leaves’.
FOOTNOTE — SELF PORTRAIT (1881)
John Everett Millais — Wikipedia
Christ in the House of His Parents — Wikipedia
Ophelia (painting) — Wikipedia
» Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
https://smarthistory.org/millais-ophelia/
Autumn Leaves (painting) — Wikipedia
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/millais-viewpoint-256649
Jean-François Millet — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
