Literary connections

Fate has not dealt kindly with Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96). For those who are not enthusiasts of the Pre-Raphaelites, this founding member of the Brotherhood tends to be categorised as the one who ‘went populist’ with such all-too-memorable scenes as ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ (now in the Tate) and the notorious Pears Soap advert ‘Bubbles’. Or, if your mnemonic centres function best through the stimulant of scandal, you may recall that it was Millais who stole Ruskin’s wife Effie (Euphemia Gray, who modelled for his justly famous painting ‘Ophelia’), and duly wed her after her marriage to the famous art critic was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. The fact that Millais produced two masterpieces of genre painting, ‘The Blind Girl’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’, is largely overlooked in the urge to pigeonhole his work as sentimental. This is a bit like dismissing the entire oeuvre of Dickens on the same grounds.