Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/183

 nail. His mother kneels by him and kisses him. St. Joseph, St. Anne, and St. John, undistinguishable from ordinary human beings, play different parts in the little drama of sympathy, just as a carpenter's family might do any day in any country. They are all English in type. Such a treatment of a scene in the life of the Holy Family aroused great hostility. The 'Times' stigmatised it as 'revolting,' and its minute finish of detail as 'loathsome.' Violent attacks came from nearly all quarters, including 'Blackwood,' and even from Charles Dickens in 'Household Words,' who afterwards owned his mistake. Another picture of this year, 1850, 'Ferdinand lured by Ariel,' met with scarcely better reception from the critics, and was refused by the dealer for whom it was painted. Nevertheless, 'The Carpenter's Shop' was bought for 15(W. by a dealer named Farrer, and 'Ferdinand' by Mr. Ellison of Sudbrooke Holme, Lincolnshire, for the same sum. About this time Millais began to feel that the excessively minute handling which was one of the characteristics of the Pre-Raphaelites was a mistake (see Autobiographical Notes, i. 278), but little difference in this respect is to be noted in his work of the next few years. The most notable of these were : 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark,' and 'The Woodman's Daughter,' from a poem by Patmore, and ' Mariana of the Moated Grange ' (all exhibited in 1851); 'The Huguenot' and 'Ophelia' (1852) ; The Proscribed Royalist' and ' The Order of Release' (1853). 'The Return of the Dove,' though the girls who are receiving the bird were very plain, was exquisitely painted, and Ruskin wished to buy it ; but it was purchased by Mr. Combe for 150 guineas, who bequeathed it to the university of Oxford. The background of 'The Woodman's Daughter' was a wood near Oxford, and the strawberries which the squire's boy is offering to the labourer's daughter were purchased in Covent Garden—four for 5s. 6d. 'Mariana' was purchased by Mr. Windus, and now belongs to Mr. H. F. Makins. 'The Huguenot,' the figures of which were painted from Mr. Arthur (afterwards General) Lempriere and Miss Ryan, was bought by a dealer named White for 300l. 'Ophelia' was a portrait of Miss Siddall (Mrs. D. G. Rossetti), and the scene was painted by the side of the Ewell at Kingston. For 'The Proscribed Royalist' Mr. Arthur Hughes, the well-known painter, sat, Miss Ryan again appearing in the female figure. The scene was a little wood near Hayes in Kent. In 'The Order of Release' the female figure was painted from Mrs. Ruskin, who was afterwards to become his wife. During these years Millais was wont to spend much time in the country to paint his backgrounds, lodging at farmhouses and cottages, in company with his brother, Mr. Holman Hunt, and Charles Allston Collins. Having settled upon the piece of landscape he meant to introduce, he would paint it day by day with exact fidelity and almost microscopic minuteness. Such backgrounds, not only in his pictures, but those of Holman Hunt and their followers, form a very distinct feature of the strict 'Pre-Raphaelite' period. For literal truth to nature's own colours and rendering of intricate detail, those by Millais stand almost alone, especially the river scene in 'Ophelia.'

All this time Millais was fighting hard for his new principles of art, and suffered much from the antagonism of critics, dealers, and others, including many artists of the older school ; but he managed to sell his pictures in spite of all, and gradually achieved popularity also. With the exhibition of 'The Huguenot' the fight may be said to have been won, as far at least as the public were concerned. Its sentiment, its refinement of expression, and thorough execution appealed to nearly all who saw it. But Millais and the Pre-Raphaelite cause had many supporters and sympathisers, the most important of whom was John Ruskin [q.v.Suppl.], who expressed his enthusiasm in letters to the 'Times' and in his pamphlet called 'Pre-Raphaelitism' (1851). Millais first met Ruskin in this year, and two years afterwards he was joined by Ruskin and his wife. at Wellington, the Trevelyans' house in Northumberland, and went to Scotland with them. He made several architectural designs for Ruskin, and in 1854 painted a portrait of him standing by the river Finlass, which was bought by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland [q. v. Suppl.] In the autumn of 1853 he took to hunting with John Leech [q. v.], and in November of the same year he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. By this time the brotherhood, whose meetings had always been few and far between, had died a natural death, and Millais had soon to lose the companionship of Mr. Holman Hunt, who went to Syria in February 1854. In this year Millais did not exhibit at the Royal Academy, but in 1855 he sent three pictures, including 'The Rescue,' a scene from a fire in a modern town house, with a frantic mother seizing her two children from the arms of a fireman. This was painted in honour of brave firemen, and was a new departure, for the scene was completely modern, and the conception was entirely his own. The mother was painted