Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/184

 from Mrs. Nassau Senior, the sister of Tom Hughes [q. v. Suppl.] author of 'Tom Brown's School Days.' Ruskin, in his notes on the principal pictures in the academy, declared it to be 'the only great picture exhibited,' adding that it was 'very great,' and that ' the immortal element is in it to the full.' In the great Paris Exhibition of 1855 Millais was represented by 'The Order of Release,' 'Ophelia,' and ' The Return of the Dove.' This was the year of Leighton's 'Cimabue,' and the two painters met for the first time. In July of this year (1855) Millais married Euphemia Chalmers, the eldest daughter of George Gray of Bowerswell, Perth, who had obtained a decree of the 'nullity' of her marriage with John Ruskin. They went to live at Annat Lodge, near Bowerswell. In the garden of this residence was painted the celebrated picture of 'Autumn Leaves,' which was exhibited in 1856 with 'Peace Concluded, 1856,' The Blind Girl,' 'L'Enfant du Regiment,' and a 'Portrait of a Gentleman.' 'Autumn Leaves' represents four girls heaping up dead leaves in a warm twilight or afterglow ; 'Peace Concluded,' a wounded officer and his wife, with their children playing with animals out of a Noah's ark a cock, a bear, a lion, and a turkey, symbolical of the nations engaged in the late war in the Crimea. In his 'Notes' Ruskin strongly praised 'Autumn Leaves' and 'Peace Concluded;' indeed, his praise of the latter was extravagant. Of 'Autumn Leaves' he said it 'is by much the most poetical work the painter has yet conceived, and also, as far as I know, the first instance existing of a perfectly painted twilight,' and of both he prophesied that they would 'rank in future among the world's best masterpieces.' 'The Blind Girl' contained two figures the blind girl and her companion, a younger girl, resting on a bank beside a common. The blind girl, with red hair and a concertina, is not beautiful, but the group is pathetic from its very truth and simplicity. The background one of the best the artist ever painted represents the common and village of Icklesham, near Winchelsea. 'L'Enfant du Regiment,' now called ' The Random Shot,' is supposed to be an incident in the French Revolution, and represents a wounded child lying on a soldier's cloak in a church. The tomb on which the cloak is spread was painted from one in Icklesham church.

In the spring of 1857 Millais took lodgings in Savile Row. His studio in Langham Chambers was shared with his friend, J. D. Luard, from 1853 to 1860, when Luard died. The principal pictures exhibited in 1857 were 'Sir Isumbras at the Ford' and 'The Escape of a Heretic.' The knight is old, in golden armour, mounted on a black horse, and is bearing with him two poor children across the river. In front of him a girl is seated, and a boy clings to him from behind. Behind, under a brilliant evening sky, is a landscape composed from the Bridge of Eden and the range of the Ochills, with a tower painted from old Elcho Castle. On the further bank are two nuns.

The comparative freedom with which he was now painting offended Ruskin, who devoted to 'Sir Isumbras' several pages of stern reproof, declaring, in his 'Notes' for 1857, that the change in the artist's manner from the years of 'Ophelia' and 'Mariana' 'is not only Fall—it is catastrophe.' This picture was very cleverly caricatured in a lithograph by Mr. F. Sandys, in which the horse is turned to a donkey branded J. R., the knight into Millais, while Dante Rossetti and Holman Hunt take the places of the girl and the boy. 'Sir Isumbras' was bought by Charles Reade, the novelist, and is now in the possession of Mr. R. V. Benson, at whose request the artist repainted the horse and its trappings. Ruskin was equally severe on 'The Escape of the Heretic' on account of its subject and the violence of its expression. Millais's next important pictures were 'Apple Blossoms' or 'Spring,' and 'The Vale of Rest,' which were exhibited in 1859 (he sent no picture to the academy in 1858). The subject of 'The Vale of Rest' (two nuns in a convent garden, one digging a grave) had occurred to him during his honeymoon, and 'Apple Blossoms' was commenced in 1856. The first was distinguished by its impressive sentiment and the background of oaks and poplars seen against an evening sky. The face of one of the nuns was of repellent ugliness, and was repainted in 1862 from a Miss Lane. 'The Vale of Rest' is now in the Tate Gallery. Both pictures were painted at Bowerswell. In 'Apple Blossoms' some beautiful girls are sporting in an orchard under boughs of brilliant apple blossom, painted with great force and freedom. The central figure is Miss Georgiana Moncrieff (Lady Dudley) ; Lady Forbes, two sisters-in-law, and a model sat for the others. Ruskin extolled the power with which these pictures were painted, and called 'The Vale of Rest' a 'great picture,' but still insisted on the deterioration of the artist. At this time Millais still seems to have suffered much from the animosity of critics and others, and to have felt anxiety about the future ; but he sold all his pictures at good prices, and in 1860 took a house in Bryanston Square,